Optimum Proportion of Masonry Chip Aggregate for Internally Cured Concrete

Abstract

Proper curing of concrete is essential for achieving desirable mechanical properties. However, in a developing country like Bangladesh, curing is often neglected due to lack of proper knowledge and skill of local contractors. Consequently, general concreting work of the country has been found to have both strength and durability issues. Under such scenario, internal curing could be adopted using masonry chip aggregate (MCA) which is quite common in this region. It is observed that saturated MCA desorbs water under favorable relative humidity and temperature. This paper presents the effectiveness of MCA as internal curing medium and recommends a tentative optimum mix proportion to produce such concrete. The experimental study was conducted in two phases. It was found that 20% replacement of stone chips with MCA produced better performing internally cured concrete both in terms of strength and durability. Performance of internally cured concrete with recommended proportion of MCA is comparable to that of normally cured control concrete samples with conventional stone chips. In addition, internally cured concrete performed significantly better than control samples when kept under similar adverse curing conditions. In the absence of supply of external water for curing, compressive strength of internally cured concrete for 20% replacement can be as high as 1.5 times the strength of the control concrete samples. Significant better performance in permeability than that of control samples was also observed for this percent replacement under such adverse curing conditions. Keywords: internal curing, lightweight aggregate, temperature, humidity, desorption, strength, permeability. Abbreviations IC

Effect of fly ash on the strength of porous concrete using recycled coarse aggregate to replace low-quality natural coarse aggregate

“…It is well known that the mechanical properties of concrete are highly influenced by its density. A denser concrete generally provides higher strength [13]. Previous research by Aoki [14] indicated the same trend as the current study.…”