Reconstruction of stand areas and taxiways at Barcelona Airport/ES

Initial situation

At Barcelona airport, concrete slabs in the stand areas and taxiways were heavily damaged and needed to be reconstructed. High traffic volume during the day, meant that this reconstruction work was only possible in very short overnight time windows.

Solution concept

The rapid-hardening concrete, Concretum^® Q-FLASH 2/20 reaches a compressive strength of > 20 N/mm² just 2 hours after adding water and yet still remains workable for approx. 60 minutes. In addition, Concretum^® Q-FLASH 2/20 has low shrinkage. As a result, cracks do not occur and
the concrete is extremely durable. These qualities allowed the airport operator AENA to successfully carry out essential maintenance work under difficult initial conditions and without disrupting flight operations.
As there was no concrete plant in close proximity, the concrete was produced directly in mixer trucks. The mixer trucks were loaded in advance with the aggregates and the mixing water required for production. All mixer trucks then travelled in convoy to the construction site and were placed around the slab to be concreted. The binder was loaded from big bags and the desired concrete consistency was set with the measured water. All mixer trucks then unloaded together directly into the area being concreted. Due to the fluid consistency of the concrete, only limited compacting was necessary and the concrete surface could be spreaded with a vibrating beam finisher.
Typically, the area around the slab being replaced was closed at around 8:00 pm and could be re-opened to aircraft traffic again at 6.00 am.