What is Mix Designer, and what information does it use?

Overview

Mix Designer helps technical teams build and compare mixes for one concrete application, using your plant materials and the project's limits. As you build or edit a mix, you see how it's likely to perform on strength, cost, carbon, gradation and placement, all in one view.

What Mix Designer stores

Project requirements: the limits and targets the mix must meet for the application.
Producer preferences: your priorities, which the AI Mix Design Assistant and Enhance work within.
Plant materials: the materials available at your plant, with prices, GWP values and physical properties when available.
Required average strength (f'cr): the over design target, which you can edit.
Manual entry: build the mix yourself from your plant materials.
Copied mix: start from an existing mix and edit it.
AI-suggested starting point: the AI Mix Design Assistant suggests a starting mix from the project targets, your plant's materials and your preferences, within the project requirements.
Your current mix
Your plant materials
Project limits
Material prices
Any available test data

Ways to start a mix What you see for the mix on screen

What's shown	What it tells you
Expected strength at selected ages	The Predictive Strength Model's estimate, shown against each strength requirement.
Cost	Based on your plant material prices.
Carbon	Based on the GWP values of your plant materials.
Gradation	How the aggregate particle sizes are distributed. Gradation outside its ranges can also lower the placement ratings.
Paste and water	The paste content and water content of the mix. Paste content sets the starting point for the shrinkage rating.
Placement ratings	Rule-based finishability, pumpability and shrinkage ratings.

These change as you build or edit the mix, so you can see the effect of each change right away.

One application per project

One Mix Designer project represents one application with one set of requirements. Within that project you can set up to three strength requirements: f'cr at the design age, plus up to two additional age-and-strength pairs.

Before you begin

Keep prices and GWP values current, because cost and carbon depend on them. The Lower cost goal in Enhance isn't available until every plant material has a price.

Related articles

[Link: How do f'cr and strength requirements work in Mix Designer?]
[Link: How do the finishability, pumpability and shrinkage ratings work?]
[Link: What can the AI Mix Design Assistant do, and what are its limits?]
[Link: What is Enhance, and which goal should I choose?]