The American Ceramic Society’s Cements Division organized their 9th Advances in Cement-Based Materials meeting June 11-12, 2018 on the expansive and picturesque Pennsylvania State University campus in University Park, Pennsylvania. Highlights from the event include a student reception, poster session, National Science Foundation program update, Della Roy Lecture and a 3-D printing workshop.  Experience these exciting meetings and gain the opportunity to learn and grow with professionals in the cements field.

Cements Division Meeting Highlights from June 11-12, 2018

9th Advances in Cement-Based Materials meeting opened Monday’s program with keynote speakers, Kimberly Kurtis and Maria Juenger, kicking off the day of concurrent technical sessions. Mid-afternoon, during the Cements Division business meeting, Division Chair Matt D’Ambrosia presented Division information including ACerS supplemental funding and budget usage, and division membership growth. The National Science Foundation Program update, was followed by the live broadcast Della Roy Lecture. Jan Olek of Purdue University, Lafayette, Indiana addressed the packed auditorium during his lecture, “Green Concrete—the past, the present and the future”.

Following the lecture, the attendees proceeded to the Hintz Family Alumni Center to participate in the evening poster session where over 30 posters representing research were presented. The evening concluded with the Elsevier-sponsored Della Roy Reception.

Tuesday began with the 3-D Printing Workshop presented by Jan Olek, Reza Moini, Joseph Biernacki, and Ali Kazemian. Several sessions throughout the day included talks on Rheology and Additive Manufacturing, Smart Materials and Computational Materials Science, Alternative Cementitious Materials and Durability and Service-Life Modeling. The afternoon’s closing presentations featured David Lange’s session on “Quantifying the performance of nuclear power plant concrete structures affected by ASR” and Steve Feldman’s talk, “Concrete as Granular Fluid”. The YouTube Research Video and poster session winners, and Brunauer Best Paper Award were also announced.

This year’s YouTube Research Video contest winners were Sooraj Kumar of Arizona State University for the poster entitled, “Modelling extrusion-based 3D printing of cement-based materials” and Samet Bazer of Pennsylvania State University for the poster, “Shrinkage Compensation of Concrete with MgO Expansive Agent and Petrography”. Their winning videos were from among 6 entries.

The 2018 Poster winners were:  Yu Song, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Karthik Pattaje S., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Kai Gong, Princeton University; Nanaissa Maiga, Center for Excellence in Airport Technology; and Juan Pablo Gevaudan, University of Colorado Boulder.

The Brunauer Best Paper Award is presented to the best refereed paper on cements published during the previous calendar year in the Bulletin or the Journal of the American Ceramic Society. Jeffrey Bullard was presented the Brunauer certificate for his contribution to the 2017 winning paper: An Ideal Solid Solution Model for C–S–H; Journal of the American Ceramic Society; (2016) authored by Jeffrey Bullard and George Scherer.

The meeting concluded with an outdoor ice cream social featuring flavors crafted by the Penn State Berkey Creamery.

Next year’s meeting at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will again provide exciting and thought-provoking topics. Check ACerS website and the Bulletin for details in early 2019.