A tough challenge: The concrete had to exhibit an application time of at least two hours under extreme conditions with temperatures between 35 and 40 °C.

A bridge for Brunei

The 2.7 kilometre long bridge to connect Brunei with the island of Pulau Muara Besar across a strait was scheduled to take about three years to build. The project is expected to be completed in April 2018, by which time 150,000 cubic metres of concrete with MC admixtures will have been poured into the structure.
Brunei Bridge

Pulau Muara Besar - Brunei

Once completed, the bridge will serve as an important traffic artery connecting the mainland of the Southeast Asian sultanate with a new industrial complex on the island of Pulau Muara Besar. The bridge is a flagship development for Brunei and a prestigious project for the contractor, China Harbour Engineering Company Ltd. (CHEC). As a result, correspondingly high demands were placed on the quality of the building materials from the very start. MC-PowerFlow 2151 and Centrament Retard 311 succeeded in establishing their superiority in what is a competitive international market of suppliers for concrete admixtures, delivering excellent results in the preliminary tests both for ready-mixed concrete and precast concrete components. Together with our local partner, C.Tech Sdn Bhd, we have been able to develop ideal concrete formulations for a wide variety of applications.
MC admixtures satisfy extreme requirements
The challenge lay not only in working the concrete under the hot climatic conditions of Southeast Asia, but also in the required resistance to seawater. In addition, the work had to be carried out with a CEM I cement (62.5R), an extremely fine but exacting grade intended to guarantee a very high level of strength and durability in the concrete. MC-PowerFlow 2151 was used for the bridge’s foundations and girders. Based on MC polymer technology, the high-performance superplasticiser is free of corrosion-promoting components, can be mixed quickly into the concrete and ensures extremely good liquefaction despite significant water savings. The project in Brunei achieved the required two hours of processing time for the concrete under outside temperatures between 35° and 40° Celsius.

Pulau Muara Besar Bridge

Pulau Muara Besar Bridge
© MC-Bauchemie 2025

Combined with Centrament Retard 311, MC-PowerFlow 2151 was just as successful in the construction of the bridge piers. The retarder’s liquefying effect not only prolongs the workability period, it also results in a flatter temperature curve, thus reducing the risk of temperature-related stress cracks. It likewise contributes to increased final strength in the concrete. The right mix ensured that the concrete’s application time was extended to up to four hours.
Both these MC admixtures proved their worth in Brunei in an offshore site under difficult climatic conditions, with very good results: the concretes exhibit optimised processing properties, the required strength levels and an outstanding quality of finish, thus complying with the high quality specifications of the client.

Related content

References
Magazine
MC-Pedia
Contact
News
Cookie settings

We are continuously improving our website and we use cookies for this purpose. For an optimal user experience, we recommend that you accept them. Otherwise, parts of the page will be deactivated in the display in accordance with data protection regulations.

Essential

Essential cookies for the website to work properly.

Always active
Analytics

We collect data in order to analyze user behavior on the site. This data will be evaluated to provide a better user experience and make you find what you need faster and easier.

Marketing

We analyze marketing data, for example if you found our site through a marketing campaign. We provide information about success or abandoned carts to better understand if you are interested in a certain product or not.

Comfort

Services that make using our site easier but that are not technically necessary. This includes Google Maps for easy location information, YouTube for embedded videos but also the use of contact forms, which are protected from Spam Using Google ReCaptcha.