UHPC concrete history in floating constructions and outlook for the future

More than twenty years ago, a very special UHPC binder was developed that had a density far below 1 in order to be able to build ship hulls with a weight of several hundred tonnes. In Asia, several large hulls have been successfully built with this UHPC material. The hulls of this special material had many advantages over a traditional steel construction. They were much lighter which increased the loading weight, they were absolutely resistant to salt water which reduced the inspections to almost zero and thus saved immense costs. UHPC concrete was easy to form and, especially in large quantities, reduced production costs and times. But one of the biggest advantages of this particular UHPC was that it was unsinkable. Even in the event of catastrophic damage, the components would still float, providing an enormously high level of safety compared to a steel structure that would sink instantly.
After all these years, we were approached by architects for this special binder material for their floating cities. The question was also whether we could produce this special binder from back then again for today's floating constructions and possibly also improve it with newer elements.
This topic was so interesting for us that we pulled out the old documents from our drawers. It turned out that modern raw materials and elements could improve the recipe of that time. Today, we believe that we will be able to offer a new, modern binder recipe ready for production in a few months.
It would be possible to produce this special binder in most coastal countries.

WPE DK