The Crumbling Concrete Foundations Project has received $4 million in funding from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), to support their research concerning the source of concrete degradation and possible solutions.

For this project, CEE Professor Kay Wille is the principal investigator, joined by co-PIs CEE Department Head Marisa Chrysochoou and CTI Associate Program Director James Mahoney. Their team works with homeowners to identify how much pyrrhotite - which the team argues leads to concrete degradation - is present, how it varies, and if it can be prevented.

“The goal of this research is to make a defined conclusion for these questions, but that’s not an easy task,” Wille says. With this funding, the team will continue to look into five areas of focus, including sampling methods, accelerated testing, and risk assessment.

Their testing methods include heating up concrete to measure its sulfur content, which can be an indicator for faultiness. "We wait until this is up to 1450°C," explains Wilmalis Rodriguez, an undergraduate environmental engineering student working in the lab. "And then I put them in [our LECO machine], and I wait two minutes, and it tells me the percentage."

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