SmartRock® Plus was originally designed for ready mix producers, however, prestressed concrete producers now also see a lot of opportunity in this technology. There are four ways prestressed producers can take advantage of the SmartRock® Plus technology for real-time monitoring of temperature, strength, and maturity.
1) Temperature Monitoring: Many specifications and DOT requirements necessitate recording concrete temperatures during initial curing. SmartRock® Plus is built to do just that in a very robust, durable module. Each sensor will record temperatures for up to 31 days and report current temperature to the cell phone app for up to 4 months.
2) More Efficient Use of Quality Control Staff: Many specifications require that a cylinder be broken before a bed can be released. When using heated cylinder methods to measure when a bed is ready, QC technicians, often times, are breaking cylinders for hours before they are truly ready. This wastes QC staff time that could be used out in the yard performing other activities. By using SmartRock® Plus, the technicians can check the cell phone app to know when the concrete is ready, and thus when to break the release cylinder. This can save cost of both QC time in casting and breaking excess cylinders. By working with SmartRock® Plus, prestressed producers will know when to break a cylinder.
3) Back-Up in Case Primary System Fails: When field cured cylinders don’t come up to strength or heated cylinder systems fail, at least it can be a real hassle for the concrete producer to prove the strength of the piece, at worst it can cause the element to be rejected costing potentially tens of thousands of dollars. By incorporating SmartRock® Plus into the quality control process, there is a back-up to prove the strength of the concrete and prevent having pieces rejected due to the failure of the primary compressive strength measurement.
4) Reduce Heating Costs: In winter months, especially in northern climates, prestressed concrete is heated during initial curing to help develop strength quickly. Even big concrete elements are subject to the mercy of the weather. By knowing the real-time strength of the concrete, heating can be cut off sooner, saving money on fuel costs.
