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Concrete is undoubtedly the most widely used man-made construction material in the world. This is probably because concrete uses mostly natural raw materials. From the nature, concrete can be designed to meet almost any type of requirements in terms of strength, workability and durability.
The use of concrete has created new industries such as ready mix concrete and concrete pumps. Concrete admixtures are now considered to be an integral part of concrete. Mineral additives such as fly ash, ground granulated blastfurnace slag (GGBS) and silica fume are becoming more common.
Today, common concrete strengths have gone beyond grade 20. In some cases where high strength concrete is used, the grades can be above 100. Dam engineers are talking about Roller Compacted Concrete (RCC).
And for special requirements like self-compacting concrete, High Performance Concrete is the order of the day. Methods of proportioning high performance concrete is an often talked about topic among designers and users of High Performance Concrete.
Durability is now emphasised more than just talking about strength as engineers look at the life cycle of buildings and structures. Hence, the subject of concrete repair and strengthening is a common topic of discussion among practising engineers.
Concrete has indeed come a long way and will have a never ending journey.