Strategic Communications and Marketing News Bureau

American Concrete Pavement Association honors Darter

The American Concrete Pavement Association presented its 2017 Hartmann-Hirschman-Egan Award to Michael I. Darter, principal engineer with Applied Research Associates, Inc. and a professor emeritus of civil and environmental engineering at Illinois.

Darter was recognized for his innovation, leadership, teaching and mentoring in the field of civil engineering, as well as for his advancement of technology that has resulted in countless numbers of high-quality concrete pavements.

“As an authority on design, construction, rehabilitation and management of concrete pavements worldwide, your contributions have been innumerable, far-reaching and enduring,” said ACPA President and CEO Gerald F. Voigt.  Voigt, along with many others in the concrete pavement industry, have been students, colleagues or mentees of Darter. The American Concrete Pavement Association is the national trade association for the concrete pavement industry.

Darter’s 40-plus years of consulting, research and teaching have resulted in a legacy of exceptional pavement engineers and in engineering tools used in all facets of concrete pavement design; evaluation and forensic analyses; performance prediction modeling; performance-related specifications; life-cycle cost analysis; and rehabilitation procedures.

“Among the most noteworthy is your achievement as principal developer of the AASHTO Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide, the most comprehensive tool for concrete pavements in history,” Voigt said.

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Champaign, Ill. — Marcelo Garcia, a professor of civil and environmental engineering in The Grainger College of Engineering, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

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Engineering Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Nishant Garg, center, is joined by fellow researchers, from left: Yujia Min, Hossein Kabir, Nishant Garg, center, Chirayu Kothari and M. Farjad Iqbal, front right. In front are examples of clay samples dissolved at different concentrations in a NaOH solution. The team invented a new test that can predict the performance of cementitious materials in mere 5 minutes. This is in contrast to the standard ASTM tests, which take up to 28 days. This new advance enables real-time quality control at production plants of emerging, sustainable materials. Photo taken at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign on Monday, Feb. 3, 2025. (Photo by Fred Zwicky / University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)

Researchers develop a five-minute quality test for sustainable cement industry materials

A new test developed at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign can predict the performance of a new type of cementitious construction material in five minutes — a significant improvement over the current industry standard method, which takes seven or more days to complete. This development is poised to advance the use of next-generation resources called supplementary cementitious materials — or SCMs — by speeding up the quality-check process before leaving the production floor.

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