Optimum Proportion of Masonry Chip Aggregate for Internally Cured Concrete

• Main Authors: Shohana Iffat, Tanvir Manzur, Sayedur Rahman, Munaz Ahmed Noor, Nur Yazdani
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SpringerOpen 2017-09-01
• Series: International Journal of Concrete Structures and Materials
• Subjects: internal curing; lightweight aggregate; temperature; humidity; desorption; strength
• Online Access: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40069-017-0196-5

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.