Chapter 18: Special concretes

Concrete, in the past few decades, had to change to meet new, more demanding and ever changing needs of the construction industry. The ‘changes’ have been made possible with the concurrent development of new materials, e.g. chemical and mineral admixtures, that have enabled the compressive strengths to quadruple, the expectations of durability performance to increase, and at the same time the ease with which concrete is transported and placed made easier. This new breed is called ‘special concretes’. In this section, the most commonly used special concretes are introduced and their characteristics as a construction material are highlighted.