In order to reduce carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions and produce an eco-friendly construction material, a type of concrete that uses a minimal amount of cement, yet still retains equivalent properties to ordinary cement concrete, has been developed and studied all over the world. Hwangtoh, a type of red clay broadly deposited around the world, has traditionally been considered an eco-friendly construction material, with bonus advantages of having health and cost benefits. Presently, Hwangtoh is not commonly used as a modern construction material due to properties such as low strength and high rates of shrinkage cracking. Recent studies, however, have shown that Hwangtoh can be used as a mineral admixture to improve the strength of concrete. In addition, polyethylene terephthalate (PET) fibers recycled from PET bottle waste can be used to control shrinkage cracks in Hwangtoh concrete. Therefore, in this study, performance verification is conducted on newly developed Hwangtoh concrete mixed with short recycled PET fibers. The results show that Hwangtoh concrete has compressive strength, elastic modulus, and pH properties that are similar to these features in ordinary cement concrete. The properties of carbonation depth and creep strain of Hwangtoh concrete, however, are larger and smaller, respectively, than in ordinary cement concrete. According to flexural tests, reinforced concrete (RC) specimens cast with Hwangtoh admixtures (with and without PET fibers) possess similar or better capacities than ordinary RC specimens. The addition of PET fibers significantly improves the structural ductility of RC specimens under normal environmental conditions. However, the implementations of the concrete in aggressive environment must be carefully considered, since a previous study result indicates degradation of its durability performance in aggressive environments, such as seawater [1]. The results of this study validate the possibility of using eco-friendly Hwangtoh concrete reinforced with recycled PET fibers as a structural material for modern construction.

This study proposes a modified harmony search (MHS) algorithm for determining the time-domain viscoelastic function of hot-mix asphalt (HMA) concrete materials. This MHS technique, employing a global optimization technique as well as a Wiechert model for the relaxation function, substantially enhances accuracy and consistency in the determination of viscoelastic functions of several HMA mixtures. In addition, this study shows how to determine a time-domain Prony series representation from the complex modulus in the frequency domain using the MHS algorithm. This can be efficiently used for numerical analysis with techniques such as the finite-element method. The results from lab frequency sweep tests of unmodified and lime-modified HMA at various asphalt contents were consistent with the functions obtained from the MHS algorithm.

An efficient computation method that allows for evaluating the capability of pavement structures subjected to realistic loading conditions on fatigue cracking is important for pavement engineers. This study developed a fast and reliable computation algorithm, based on evaluating the fatigue cracking resistance of flexible pavements using the principle of the multiaxial Viscoelastic Continuum Damage Mechanics (VECD). For this purpose, a viscoelastic analysis was derived for the viscoelastic multilayered pavement systems under a moving load and used for integrating the multiaxial VECD model into the developed solution. Because of the analytical nature of the algorithm, stiffness reduction by means of pseudo stiffness could be directly evaluated at any location and at any loading repetition over a three-dimensional pavement structure. The resulted evaluation indicated that overall fatigue cracking performance of pavement structures could be assessed by the bottom pseudo stiffness; however, the probability of top-down cracking was high in pavement structures with thick asphalt layers.