ACI Certification Available to Civil Engineering Students

At the University of Arkansas, Structural Materials is a required course for all civil engineering students.The course is normally taken by students in the second semester of their sophomore year or by students who are in the first semester of their junior year.As the course is presently taught, concrete materials and mixture designs makes up approximately 60 percent of the class with the remaining portion split amongst steel, timber, and fiber reinforced polymers (FRP).In an effort to create interest in the class and enthusiasm about concrete, the "Concrete Contest" began in 2003.For the contest, the students are divided into teams of four or five.Each team must develop their own mixture, batch their mixture, and test the fresh and hardened concrete properties.The students are graded on the cost of their mixture, quality control, and compressive strength at 28 days of age.Fall 2003, one group of students designed a concrete mixture which had a one day compressive strength of almost 10,000 psi, and at 28 days the winning group's concrete mixture had a strength of almost 15,000 psi.The "Concrete Contest" has taught the class many lessons, of which the one most often heard is "the concrete was not workable enough to produce concrete cylinders of good quality".The "Concrete Contest" has been a success, and it will continue to introduce HPC to new students every semester.