The Boral Materials Technical Services' Concrete Laboratory undertakes routine and specialised testing on fresh and hardened concrete.
Field testing of all Boral concrete supplied in the Sydney metropolitan area is carried out by staff based at our laboratory staff to ensure concrete workability and consistency. Slump is a standard field test and assessed at all delivery points. Vebe and several different slump flow tests can be carried out at the Concrete Laboratory.
Air content, fresh density, compactability and bleeding can all be measured.
The Concrete Laboratory Trial Mix area is temperature-controlled and can be regulated from 9°C to 36°C to simulate various environmental conditions during trial mixes. The laboratory can conduct a wide range of tests on hardened concrete to prove its ability to perform according to mix design or investigate characteristics if its history is unknown.
Compressive strength of concrete cylinders is the most familiar test for quality control purposes. The Concrete Laboratory has been equipped to process up to 400 compressive strength specimens on a daily basis. It also uses a commercial Laboratory Information Management System and internally developed software to capture data and report results.
Concrete beams can be tested for flexural strength and other specimens can be cast to assess other properties such as shrinkage, modulus of elasticity and water permeability.
The Concrete Laboratory has been involved in specific testing for major projects in Australia such as the expansion of Port Botany and the construction of Barangaroo, NorthConnex, Pacific Highway Upgrades, wind farms and Northern Road Project in NSW; Forrestfield-Airport Link in Perth; West Gate Tunnel project and Melbourne Metro in Victoria and trials for the Warragamba Dam, WestConnex and the Snowy 2.0 project in NSW.
