The Sika Experience

Hi there, this is my first post as a Sika experience blogger. When I first started working here, the task i was given was to find out, what is homogeneous concrete (Monobeton in swiss-german), and more importantly, what are the customers preferences?

As a Bachelor student in Civil Engeneering I have never heard of something like homogeneous concrete, but after a little research I found out, that it is used to build industrial, or warehouse floors. Other fields of application are bus stops, roundabouts, parkings and many more. It is basically a huge concrete slab with a specially treated surface. Therefore the concrete must fulfill specific conditions for the surface finish.

Something like that: Roundabout in Pratteln (Basel)

 It was fun to work on this subject, because I had the opportunity to go to several concrete factories and construction sites, to talk to the “users” and find out their preferences and wishes. During that time I also learned how to handle concrete, which was a first for me, because in school we just didn’t have the possibility to do as much practical work as I would have liked. So with the collected experience it became clear to me, that building a concrete slab is not as easy as I imagined. The fresh concrete properties change according to the construction site, but the hydratation of the concrete must still be predictable, to start the surface finish at the right time.

I was fascinated by the fact, that all these properties can be conrolled by adding some magic potions (admixtures). The results of my analysis went into the development of a new admixture, and as far as I know, it does have good feedback, what is pretty cool.

By the way, after this work, some of my lessons at ETH became very easy, which was a nice side effect!