The expansion and renovation of Davis Wade Stadium (DWS) at Mississippi State University (MSU), Starkville, MS, included expansion of the stadium north end zone, along with construction of a new concession concourse below the west side seating. The end zone expansion added 6255 seats, increasing total seating to 61,337 and making DWS the largest football stadium in Mississippi. The project scope included over 23,000 yd3 (17,600 m3) of concrete, in 11 different mixture designs for various applications in the project. The MSU Construction Materials Research Center (Isaac L. Howard, Chair, and Jay Shannon, Graduate Research Assistant) became part of the project team, assisting with the development and performance monitoring of innovative, sustainable mixture designs. This collaboration provided data that have supported related materials evaluation studies and has produced a peer-reviewed journal article.

Slag cement was used in nine of the 11 mixture designs, at cement replacement rates ranging from 15 to 50%. Fly ash (Class C) was also used at replacement rates from 15 to 25% in all of the mixture designs that used slag cement; thus, most mixtures were at a 50% total cement replacement while drilled piers were at 70%. These concrete mixtures provided outstanding late-age strengths with minimal retardation of setting or delay of early strengths. Constructibility was very good in all respects; the pumpable concrete yielded clean formed surfaces with minimum bug holes and finishability of flatwork was excellent. Slag cement was not only used for many different concrete applications—in some concrete, it was used in combination with ASTM C595 Type IL(10) portland-limestone cement containing 10% ground limestone.

Direct comparisons (Type IL versus Type I cement) of otherwise identical concrete mixture designs with 30% slag cement and 20% fly ash replacement not only showed improved strengths with Type IL (especially early ages), but also helped to document excellent constructibility, favorable placing and finishing qualities, and reduced permeability of the Type IL mixture with slag cement. Use of ternary and quaternary mixtures containing slag cement met sustainability objectives of reducing the environmental footprint of concrete mixtures while achieving application-specific performance objects for mass concrete, sulfate resistance, low permeability, high ultimate strength, adequate early strength, setting time, flatwork finishability, and aesthetics.

Project credits: Mississippi State University Athletic Department, Owner; LPK Architects, P.A., Architect; Pritchard Engineering, Inc., Civil Engineer; Walter P Moore, Structural Engineer; Harrell Contracting (now part of Roy Anderson Corp.), Contractor; MMC Materials, Inc., Concrete; and Holcim (US), Inc., Slag Cement.