Client: | Boralex |
|---|---|
Main contractor: | RJ McLeod |
Concrete producer: | RJ McLeod |
The background
The site is located around 1.5km south of Reay, which is an excellent site in a very windy location where wind power development makes perfect sense.
The site is approximately 11km² which hosts 24 Vestas V136-4.5MW wind turbines with max tip height of 149.9m.
The turbines have the capacity to produce enough green electricity to meet the annual demand of around 40,200 households per year.
The challenge
The turbine bases are designed incorporating a C40/50 concrete with a 30% cement replacement with each base circa 550m3.
The concrete mix design is crucial to achieve various performance criteria including, concrete rheology, slump retention, durability and target strengths.
With the above challenges, location difficulty and onsite coarse aggregates being extracted from site, onsite batching plants would need to be provided.
Our solution
Early engagement with the RJ McLeod site team at Limekiln WF, Master Builders Solutions were delighted to support by providing comprehensive technical support through our best-in-class laboratory at Swinton.
The Master Builders Solutions concrete technologists designed a variety of mix designs using the aggregate and cement materials. These laboratory trials were undertaken with the challenge to produce concrete mixes which would provide good concrete rheology and retention for ease of placement and strength characteristics.
The admixture solution designed to achieve the optimum results within the concrete was MasterGlenium SKY 925 which is a high range water reducing admixture for concrete paired with MasterSure 1970 which is a consistence retaining admixture for concrete.
RJ McLeod delivered two onsite batching plants which produced the concrete, with the coarse aggregates being extracted from site borrow pits with a local concrete sand imported.
