Last week, motorists were alarmed by a gaping hole on the carriageway of the flyover at the junction of the Sardar Patel Road and Gandhi Manadapam Road. The flyover, which usually witnesses heavy traffic, could not be shut down for a long period for repair. So, the engineers of the Chennai Corporation improvised and finished the repair work in a few hours and the bridge was good to use.
The damaged portion was paved with concrete in the quickest way possible by using ‘environment-friendly’ geocement, which is a mineral compound, which is blended with bye-product materials like fly ash, rice husk ash, slag, activated clay, alumina used in the Geopolymer formation.
The civic body usually uses regular cement for executing concrete cement repair work, which needs a long time to set, thus requiring the blocking or rerouting of traffic for several hours. It is one of the reasons the civic body used bitumen topping as a temporary repair material.
M. Ezhil, Chief Governance Officer, Kiran Global Chems Ltd., that executed the project, said the repair work carried out using the geocement was done on a experiment basis. The same material has also been used on other flyovers, including the one at Padi, that belongs to the State Highways Department. He said geocement does not require a long time for curing because of its quick bonding and faster setting time.
‘Lasts longer’
He added that it is also environment-friendly because it is a carbon-free product and does not require any water for mixing and curing. An activator, a kind of chemical, is used in place of water. On the other hand, the commonly-used Portland cement is made with limestone, which is detrimental to the environment. Geocement has a high resistance to wear and tear, Corporation engineers added.
