A new geopolymer specification ready to be “put to the test”

A new industry specification for designing with expanding geopolymers is ready to be “put to the test”, according to its lead author.

Geopolymer specialists worked with construction clients, consultants and contractors to bring together knowledge and best practices on the design and use of expanding geopolymers into the new specification document.

The specification aims to fill the knowledge gap surrounding geopolymers and lead author and Arup associate Peter Ingram said the team behind it are keen to ensure it is effective.

“People are broadly in favor – anything that makes things clearer and easier for people is a good thing,” he said. “I hope people use it and see what works and tell us when something doesn’t work and we can continue to develop it in the future. We think we’ve done a good job, but I’m sure that it will be put to the test. We want to make sure that it works.

A free webinar, sponsored by Geobear and hosted by NCE, brought together some of the key people who worked on the spec earlier this month. Ingram was joined by Geobear VP of Engineering Andy Lee, Anglian Water One Alliance Senior Managing Director Teresa Jeffcoat and slump specialist and consulting engineer Jonathan Symonds of Dsace.

The panel discussed the historical use of geopolymers and the barriers that exist to acceptance, highlighting why the specification is important.

Ingram pointed out that “engineers like to be able to understand what they’re specifying and what the critical parameters are.”

He added: “The idea is to enable specifiers to be able to bid for work to a number of different specialist contractors and to enable fair evaluation and comparison of their offers rather than just having to fall back on one specialist contractor.

“We tried to define the critical inputs and expected outputs – what you need to provide the specialist contractor as a specifier and what they need to provide you in terms of design or verification, for example. We also tried to cover a range of possible techniques to make sure we had clear specifications for the range of things you could do and provide good guidance notes to go with that.”

The panel also discussed the challenges it faced while developing the document and how the specification can help industry address these issues.

Additionally, they explain how to effectively use the specification and how to design effective ground stabilization solutions using geopolymers.

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