Patent ID: 7386368

Claim:
A method of manufacturing a concrete composition comprising: obtaining a concrete mix design prepared at least in part by: inputting into a computing system data relating to particle size and particle packing density for a plurality of solid components; inputting into the computing system a target strength; inputting into the computing system a selected design K factor for use in determining a predicted strength for each of a plurality of concrete mix designs generated by the computing system, the design K factor being selected based on the target strength from among a plurality of different K factors that vary with concrete strength for the given set of raw materials; the computing system designing a plurality of concrete mix designs having varying quantities of raw materials; the computing system identifying an amount of water for each of the concrete mix designs; the computing system determining, based on the selected design K factor and the identified amount of water, a predicted strength for each of the concrete mix designs; and the computing system comparing the predicted strength for each concrete mix design with the target strength to identify a concrete mix design that is better optimized with respect to strength compared to other of the plurality of concrete mix designs; and manufacturing a concrete composition according to the concrete mix design or a corrected variation thereof.