Ultra-high strength concrete with a footprint less than 20% compared to a standard mixture

During Glass Technology Live at Glasstec 2024, a fully bonded glass-concrete walkway, named G2C (glass-to-concrete), was unveiled. With only the use of structural adhesive bonds, an aesthetical and structurally optimised hybrid glass-concrete demonstrator was developed by the Department of Structural Engineering and Building Materials of the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture of Ghent University (Belgium) in collaboration with the department of structural adhesives of fischerwerke GmbH & Co. KG (Germany) and vitroplena bv (Belgium).

Did you know, that not only the potential of structural bonding between glass and concrete was explored, but also the use of concrete without cement?

CRH Structural Concrete Belgium demonstrates the potential in concrete to drastically reduce its carbon footprint. The technology, developed in collaboration with Resourcefull, uses steel slag and is a milestone in the pursuit of more sustainable concrete. In this project, an Ultra‐High‐Performance Concrete (UHPC) staircase was made without cement. Cement is responsible for ± 90% of the carbon footprint of unreinforced concrete. In UHPC in particular, cement has a very large share in the carbon footprint of the final concrete product. In this project, all cement was replaced by a binding agent made of secondary flows from metallurgy. The obtained concrete mixture achieves overall strengths of more than 100 MPa and is low in shrinkage, ensuring an excellent aesthetic final quality of the architectural product with a footprint of less than 20% compared to the reference mixture.

The G2C walkway using cement-free UHPC serves as a powerful demonstration of how structural adhesives and alternative binding agents can transform building materials. Together, they pave the way for aesthetically refined, sustainable solutions in architecture, offering a glimpse into the future of eco-conscious construction.