PBTDL Method: Save Time, Money, and Headaches on Your Mass Concrete Placement

Description

Contractors can face a multitude of challenges when concrete fails to meet performance requirements, leading to delays and complications. To mitigate risks during the placement of mass concrete, contractors are required to submit a thermal control plan to manage its maximum temperature and temperature differentials. However, this approach does not fully consider that as the concrete cures, the allowed thresholds can increase as it gains strength, helping to avoid additional costs and project delays. Thankfully, another approach is gaining traction in the market: the performance-based temperature differential limit (PBTDL) method.

This presentation will focus on the need for and benefits of a more dynamic alternative approach, known as the PBTDL method, which provides a temperature differential limit that is directly tied to the concrete’s compressive strength based on real-time conditions. This method enables an increased allowed temperature differential, while still maintaining a safe threshold, through monitoring of the maximum temperature and temperature differentials.

This session will explore how, through real-time data and analytics via ruggedized IoT sensors on mass concrete projects, contractors, engineers, and project owners can leverage a more advanced temperature differential limit directly tied to the concrete’s strength.

The session will cover:

• Mass concrete pours
• A description of a typical thermal control plan
• An overview of the PBTDL approach
• Why agencies are adopting this approach
• Real-world case studies