STUDENT SPOTLIGHT: Each month, or every other month, a student will provide a 1-page illustrated abstract of the research they are currently conducting. This is a wonderful opportunity for the student, for our International Society for Concrete Pavements (ISCP) Members, and for the transferring and sharing technology/research through our concrete paving industry.
The ISCP “STUDENT RESEARCH SPOTLIGHT” for June 2026 is Loretta Newton-Hoare, a Masters Candidate at the School of Science, Technology and Engineering, at University of the Sunshine Coast (Queensland, Australia).
BIO:
Loretta Newton-Hoare is an airfield engineer and Masters Candidate at the School of Science, Technology and Engineering, at University of the Sunshine Coast, supervised by Dr Greg White as part of the Airfield Pavement Research Program. Her research focuses on identifying immediate options to increase the sustainability of concrete for airport pavements through TBL analysis of concrete mixtures containing recycled materials and industrial by-products. Her work also investigates barriers to the implementation of sustainable concrete pavements at airports in Australia, including conservative specifications and lack of alignment between the design-specification-production acceptance system. She won the Best Conference Paper Award at the 8th Australian Society for Concrete Pavements Conference in 2025 and as a result, will be presenting at EUPave 15th International Symposium on Concrete Roads in 2026. She will be submitting her thesis this year.
Title: Investigation of sustainable concrete mixtures for airport pavements
Airfield concrete pavements occupy a relatively small proportion of airport pavements in Australia, yet they are among the most critical assets in aviation. Failures in runway, taxiway, or apron pavements can have immediate operational, safety, and economic consequences, making durability and structural reliability essential. At the same time, the aviation sector faces increasing pressure to reduce embodied carbon and improve sustainability in pavement infrastructure, with availability of raw natural resources decreasing. Loretta’s work focuses on theoretically assessing constituent material choices for concrete airport pavement mixtures, investigating supplementary cementitious materials and recycled aggregates that produce concrete capable of performing as well as, or better than, conventional mixtures. International rigid airport pavement and concrete road specifications already permit a higher degree of sustainable materials compared to typical Australian airport pavement practice. A major component of the research involved development of a stochastic TBL modelling framework to evaluate sustainable concrete mixtures against environmental, economic, and social performance criteria, using Monte Carlo simulation to account for uncertainty. Results showed that mixtures incorporating supplementary cementitious materials such as fly ash and slag, recycled concrete aggregate, or geopolymer cement can reduce triple bottom line costs significantly compared with ordinary Portland cement concrete; however, emissions and financial costs associated with long haulage distances, especially for aggregates, can substantially erode sustainability gains, highlighting the importance of locally available materials.
Her research also investigates how specifications limit sustainable concrete pavements being realised in the field. Loretta investigated how strength acceptance in production remains largely dependent on 28-day flexural beam testing and prescriptive conformity criteria, with the flexural strength value chosen for concrete strength acceptance in production not always aligned to what is intended by design, noting Australian practice is to use FAARFIELD but not the complementary P-501 specification. To address this, her work has critically evaluated alternative approaches, including statistical and early age acceptance methods and performance-based assessment criteria, to determine whether more representative and practical specification limits could be adopted that would avoid the tendency for overly thick and over-strength concrete pavements.
Figure 1. Normalized social, environmental and financial costs of concrete mixtures containing fly ash (FA), slag (GGBFS), blast furnace slag aggregate (BFS), recycled concrete aggregate (RCA) and geopolymer cement (GPC) compared to a Portland cement control (OPC).
The outcomes so far reinforce the need for performance-based specifications that permit the use of recycled materials and industrial by-products in pursuit of sustainable airport pavement practice, reinforced by the quantitative evidence that substantial triple bottom line cost reductions are achievable. The findings aim to support the development of a performance-based concrete airport pavement specification for the Australian context that maintains safety and reliability while enabling innovation in concrete mixture design.
ISCP would like to feature a “STUDENT RESEARCH SPOTLIGHT” each month, or every other month. If you would like to nominate a student, or if you are a student and would like to nominate yourself or a colleague, please send ISCP an email to: newsletter@concretepavements.org