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From Waste to Resource: Boosting Reactivity of Agricultural Waste for Cementitious Applications

Fly ash and blast furnace slag have long been used as effective supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs). However, due to recent environmental regulations and industrial changes, their availability is rapidly declining in the United States. This growing scarcity indicates the urgent need for sustainable and widely available alternative SCMs. Agricultural residues from crops in the Poaceae family, such as corn and wheat, have emerged as promising natural sources of silica-rich SCMs. These plants possess the unique ability to absorb and store silica in their cellular structures, making their ashes suitable for cementitious applications. However, these residues often contain unwanted alkali and alkaline earth metals, which must be removed to improve performance and consistency. This study investigates the use of acid leaching as a pre-treatment method to enhance the quality of agricultural residue ashes. The findings demonstrate that acid leaching significantly increases the reactivity and consistency of these ashes, making them more viable as sustainable SCMs in cement and concrete applications.

Embracing Innovative Strategies for Sustainable and Resilient Bridges

The resilience of critical infrastructure, particularly bridges, is essential for ensuring public safety and maintaining essential services in the face of natural disasters and extreme environmental conditions. As such, there is an urgent need to embrace innovative and sustainable strategies that enhance the ability of infrastructure systems to withstand and recover rapidly from these challenges. This presentation explores new approaches that have been extensively investigated as a full-scale experimentally and numerically for characterizing, constructing, repairing, and assessing the resilience of major bridge elements. The discussion will highlight innovative construction and repair methods (using advanced materials such as fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) and ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC)) and utilize these advanced materials to improve the longevity and performance of bridges. The presentation will examine the assessment techniques with a physics-based approach and the integration of emerging technologies, such as enabled Multiphysics simulation, that can enhance decision-making and accelerate recovery efforts.