Mechanical Concrete™, a confined aggregate concrete.
Samuel G. Bonasso
The Problem
Mechanical Concrete™ and Mechanical Cement™ are trademarked names for a recently discovered, confined-aggregate-concrete. The discovery was made attempting to recycle used tires. The method was to bury the tires by laying them on their sidewalls, filling them with the stone to be used in the base of roadways and parking lots. Solving the associated construction problems I discovered Mechanical Concrete™. It uses a cylinder to confine and integrate stone
aggregates into a three-dimensional, load bearing mass.
The Discovery, The Solution and The Trim Tab
Mechanical Cement™ is a cylinder. It confines and integrates crushed stone aggregates into a load-bearing building material and provides lateral tensile strength. Compared to portland-cement concrete or compacted stone, Mechanical Concrete™ offers a simple, fast, low cost method for constructing foundations, roadway bases, building walls, retaining walls, dams, levees, bridge abutments, and similar bearing-load-type concrete constructions.
Mechanical Concrete™ is created simply by placing crushed stone into an open ended cylindrical segment. The cylinder is made from any adequate strength, tensile material. Collections of Mechanical Concrete™ units, cylinders plus stone, may rest on the earth, each other or some other supporting surface. A Mechanical Concrete™ unit is analogous to a brick, a concrete block or a cut stone block.
Volumes of aggregate materials like crushed stone, grain or marbles display fluid like properties. Because they are primarily compressive materials, fluids tend to flow in all directions when placed under pressure.
When a vertical, gravity load is applied to the Mechanical Concrete™ element, the Mechanical Cement™ cylinder restrains the crushed stone ‘fluid pressure’ in the lateral horizontal direction. This lateral restraint allows the stone to transmit the vertical, gravity load to the supporting surface. Providing this lateral restraint is a key structural function of the cement-water matrix in portland-cement concrete. The cylinder accomplishes it with less material, energy and labor.
Limited tensile strength restricts the load bearing capacity of conventional concrete; when loaded to failure, it fails laterally by cracking and splitting apart. In Mechanical Concrete™ the cylinder tensile strength laterally restrains this ‘fluid-like pressure’ which is usually one-third of the vertical gravity load. The cylinder is a purely tensile element and an application of the trimtab principle.
Business Plan
The business plan is based on the economic and construction success of full scale lab tests and four, field demonstration projects. It calls for the creation of regional, light manufacturing and distribution centers. These centers receive and process used tires by removing their sidewalls. This tire without the sidewalls is the Mechanical Cement™ tire cylinder. Mechanical Cement™ is sold to and used by the heavy and general construction industry. The company, The Reinforced Aggregates Company, REAGCO, owns the distribution centers, markets and further develops the product and licenses the technology. Patent applications are pending in the USA and Canada. Globally, the technology will be available on a negotiated basis. I am also exploring other possible business development options.
Financing
To date I have financed the business. I plan to seek private investors and then use traditional banking methods, i.e. lines of credit, etc. Regional distributors will be partially owned by a locally selected business person. Regional distributors pay annual fees and license royalties to REAGCO. The local owner will manage the operations of the center. Any prize moneys will be used to advance this plan.
Who’s Doing It
Samuel G. Bonasso, the inventor, is an experienced professional engineer and Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers. He intends to recruit a CEO and other key people to run the organization. A first distributor and an experienced board of directors and advisors are in place. It is Bonasso’s intention to continue to function within the company as founder, chairman, head of R & D and strategic advisor to the executive team. He will assist in developing strategies for successfully and profitably marketing and distributing the Mechanical Concrete™ technology globally.
Credibility
Bonasso’s resume of experience is extensive and offers a wide range of engineering, business and personal references. Mechanical Concrete™ technology has been in development since 1999. The breakthrough insight occurred in July of 2004. Focused development began in early 2005. Mechanical Concrete™ and Mechanical Cement™ have been validated by numerous professional and academic engineers. It has been tested in a structural engineering laboratory in full size tests. To date four, full-scale demonstrations have been successfully constructed. These demos include one 15 foot high retaining wall for a parking lot (TRIAD photo), one 150 foot length of rural roadway (WVDOH photo), and two structural pads for industrial truck use. These demos prove the concept and the primary engineering, scientific and economic claims.
The REAGCO business plan has also been in development since early 2005 and has gone through several iterations. It has had input and review from several capable engineers and business people. The plan is being reviewed by potential investors.
Linear vs. Systems Thinking
Generally, traditional engineering is linear and two dimensional. These limitations are imposed mainly by the complexity of non-linear, multidimensional mathematics and our basic methods of graphic representation. The two-dimensionality of a sheet of paper and even the surface of the computer screen generally limits us to two-dimensional thinking. The third dimension of a thing being designed and constructed is usually created by assembling multiple slices of the two dimensional plane along the third dimensional axis. This is one reason why we have mostly orthogonal, rectangular constructions. Mechanical Concrete™ is a breakthrough because it is designed and can be used as a fully three-dimensional material. Furthermore, because of its simplicity, Mechanical Concrete™’s three-dimensional mathematical analysis is relatively easy to understand and execute. This is a classic example of finding a unique solution to a problem, which is apparently unsolvable in one system, in the next higher system.
Critical Trends and Needs
There is a general trend for technology and technique to become simplified and more broadly understood through widespread use. In this manner it becomes more available to the general population. Mechanical Concrete™ simplifies conventional concrete by replacing cement, water, rebar, forms, time, skilled labor, and knowledge of curing and placement with the Mechanical Cement™ cylinder. This act of doing more with less is another example of the trimtab principle. Mechanical Concrete™ is an advance that makes a new type of concrete available to unskilled construction workers globally. It further allows Mechanical Concrete™ to be used more widely in less modern cultures and in situations where traditional construction training, experience and infrastructure is unavailable. In developing countries Mechanical Concrete™ also allows basic transportation infrastructure construction and shelter needs to be met using locally available materials.
Ecological Responsibility
‘All our problems have been created by solutions.’ The used rubber vehicle tire is such a problem. A structural cylinder suitable for use as Mechanical Cement™ is a used vehicle tire with both sidewalls removed. Even, when the tire tread is worn away the tire tensile structure is still intact and has load bearing capacity. Commercial-off-the-shelf machines are available that can quickly remove both tire sidewalls. Used tires are a major waste disposal problem in every industrialized country. The manufacture of portland-cement used in conventional concrete is major generator of green house gases. No viable, energy efficient solution for these pollution sources and growing challenges is on the horizon.
The rubber vehicle tire is a significant and remarkable piece of modern engineering and manufacturing technique. In the US, 300 million new tires are generated annually; one for every person per year. Today the primary recycling method for used tires is to grind them into scrap rubber. More than 50% of this scrap rubber is then burned as industrial fuel in electricity generation and other applications further contributing to greenhouse gases and air pollution. Globally Mechanical Concrete™ can use the chemically inert, structurally intact, used tire cylinder to build foundations for housing and industry, farm to market roadways and other forms of basic infrastructure. In one step, using Mechanical Concrete™, lowers construction energy use and costs and reduces a major air and solid waste pollution source; another application of the trimtab principle. While in commercial and residential applications exposed tires are not considered aesthetically pleasing, numerous attractive finishes are economically available including grass seeding and landscaping, painting and other surface treatments. .
Verifiability
Mechanical Concrete™ has been tested in the structural engineering labs at West Virginia University, Department Civil and Environmental Engineering. It behavior and properties are predictable and readily verifiable and analyzable by any qualified physicist or engineer.
The Discovery, The Solution and The Trim Tab
Mechanical Cement™ is a cylinder. It confines and integrates crushed stone aggregates into a load-bearing building material and provides lateral tensile strength. Compared to portland-cement concrete or compacted stone, Mechanical Concrete™ offers a simple, fast, low cost method for constructing foundations, roadway bases, building walls, retaining walls, dams, levees, bridge abutments, and similar bearing-load-type concrete constructions.
Mechanical Concrete™ is created simply by placing crushed stone into an open ended cylindrical segment. The cylinder is made from any adequate strength, tensile material. Collections of Mechanical Concrete™ units, cylinders plus stone, may rest on the earth, each other or some other supporting surface. A Mechanical Concrete™ unit is analogous to a brick, a concrete block or a cut stone block.
Volumes of aggregate materials like crushed stone, grain or marbles display fluid like properties. Because they are primarily compressive materials, fluids tend to flow in all directions when placed under pressure.
When a vertical, gravity load is applied to the Mechanical Concrete™ element, the Mechanical Cement™ cylinder restrains the crushed stone ‘fluid pressure’ in the lateral horizontal direction. This lateral restraint allows the stone to transmit the vertical, gravity load to the supporting surface. Providing this lateral restraint is a key structural function of the cement-water matrix in portland-cement concrete. The cylinder accomplishes it with less material, energy and labor.
Limited tensile strength restricts the load bearing capacity of conventional concrete; when loaded to failure, it fails laterally by cracking and splitting apart. In Mechanical Concrete™ the cylinder tensile strength laterally restrains this ‘fluid-like pressure’ which is usually one-third of the vertical gravity load. The cylinder is a purely tensile element and an application of the trimtab principle.
Business Plan
The business plan is based on the economic and construction success of full scale lab tests and four, field demonstration projects. It calls for the creation of regional, light manufacturing and distribution centers. These centers receive and process used tires by removing their sidewalls. This tire without the sidewalls is the Mechanical Cement™ tire cylinder. Mechanical Cement™ is sold to and used by the heavy and general construction industry. The company, The Reinforced Aggregates Company, REAGCO, owns the distribution centers, markets and further develops the product and licenses the technology. Patent applications are pending in the USA and Canada. Globally, the technology will be available on a negotiated basis. I am also exploring other possible business development options.
Financing
To date I have financed the business. I plan to seek private investors and then use traditional banking methods, i.e. lines of credit, etc. Regional distributors will be partially owned by a locally selected business person. Regional distributors pay annual fees and license royalties to REAGCO. The local owner will manage the operations of the center. Any prize moneys will be used to advance this plan.
Who’s Doing It
Samuel G. Bonasso, the inventor, is an experienced professional engineer and Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers. He intends to recruit a CEO and other key people to run the organization. A first distributor and an experienced board of directors and advisors are in place. It is Bonasso’s intention to continue to function within the company as founder, chairman, head of R & D and strategic advisor to the executive team. He will assist in developing strategies for successfully and profitably marketing and distributing the Mechanical Concrete™ technology globally.
Credibility
Bonasso’s resume of experience is extensive and offers a wide range of engineering, business and personal references. Mechanical Concrete™ technology has been in development since 1999. The breakthrough insight occurred in July of 2004. Focused development began in early 2005. Mechanical Concrete™ and Mechanical Cement™ have been validated by numerous professional and academic engineers. It has been tested in a structural engineering laboratory in full size tests. To date four, full-scale demonstrations have been successfully constructed. These demos include one 15 foot high retaining wall for a parking lot (TRIAD photo), one 150 foot length of rural roadway (WVDOH photo), and two structural pads for industrial truck use. These demos prove the concept and the primary engineering, scientific and economic claims.
The REAGCO business plan has also been in development since early 2005 and has gone through several iterations. It has had input and review from several capable engineers and business people. The plan is being reviewed by potential investors.
Linear vs. Systems Thinking
Generally, traditional engineering is linear and two dimensional. These limitations are imposed mainly by the complexity of non-linear, multidimensional mathematics and our basic methods of graphic representation. The two-dimensionality of a sheet of paper and even the surface of the computer screen generally limits us to two-dimensional thinking. The third dimension of a thing being designed and constructed is usually created by assembling multiple slices of the two dimensional plane along the third dimensional axis. This is one reason why we have mostly orthogonal, rectangular constructions. Mechanical Concrete™ is a breakthrough because it is designed and can be used as a fully three-dimensional material. Furthermore, because of its simplicity, Mechanical Concrete™’s three-dimensional mathematical analysis is relatively easy to understand and execute. This is a classic example of finding a unique solution to a problem, which is apparently unsolvable in one system, in the next higher system.
Critical Trends and Needs
There is a general trend for technology and technique to become simplified and more broadly understood through widespread use. In this manner it becomes more available to the general population. Mechanical Concrete™ simplifies conventional concrete by replacing cement, water, rebar, forms, time, skilled labor, and knowledge of curing and placement with the Mechanical Cement™ cylinder. This act of doing more with less is another example of the trimtab principle. Mechanical Concrete™ is an advance that makes a new type of concrete available to unskilled construction workers globally. It further allows Mechanical Concrete™ to be used more widely in less modern cultures and in situations where traditional construction training, experience and infrastructure is unavailable. In developing countries Mechanical Concrete™ also allows basic transportation infrastructure construction and shelter needs to be met using locally available materials.
Ecological Responsibility
‘All our problems have been created by solutions.’ The used rubber vehicle tire is such a problem. A structural cylinder suitable for use as Mechanical Cement™ is a used vehicle tire with both sidewalls removed. Even, when the tire tread is worn away the tire tensile structure is still intact and has load bearing capacity. Commercial-off-the-shelf machines are available that can quickly remove both tire sidewalls. Used tires are a major waste disposal problem in every industrialized country. The manufacture of portland-cement used in conventional concrete is major generator of green house gases. No viable, energy efficient solution for these pollution sources and growing challenges is on the horizon.
The rubber vehicle tire is a significant and remarkable piece of modern engineering and manufacturing technique. In the US, 300 million new tires are generated annually; one for every person per year. Today the primary recycling method for used tires is to grind them into scrap rubber. More than 50% of this scrap rubber is then burned as industrial fuel in electricity generation and other applications further contributing to greenhouse gases and air pollution. Globally Mechanical Concrete™ can use the chemically inert, structurally intact, used tire cylinder to build foundations for housing and industry, farm to market roadways and other forms of basic infrastructure. In one step, using Mechanical Concrete™, lowers construction energy use and costs and reduces a major air and solid waste pollution source; another application of the trimtab principle. While in commercial and residential applications exposed tires are not considered aesthetically pleasing, numerous attractive finishes are economically available including grass seeding and landscaping, painting and other surface treatments. .
Verifiability
Mechanical Concrete™ has been tested in the structural engineering labs at West Virginia University, Department Civil and Environmental Engineering. It behavior and properties are predictable and readily verifiable and analyzable by any qualified physicist or engineer.
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