Publication

Abstract : Chemical Admixtures are added to concrete at the time of mixing of its constituents to impart workability. The requirement of right workability is the essence of good concrete. It has been found that the use of optimum use of admixtures is very important since low dosage may result in loss of fluidity and over dosage could lead to segregation, bleeding, excessive air entrainment etc in concrete. Hence it is essential to find optimum dosage of superplasticizer for getting good strength and workability. But large number of trial tests are required in the field to find the saturation dosage of superplasticizer in concrete which requires more materials and consume more time. The paper deals with developing a co-relation between the quantity requirements of superplasticiser in mortar to that of cement concrete to get good workability. In this work for preparing mortar and concrete 4 brands of locally available Portland pozzolana cement (PPC) and superplasticizer (SP) belonging to 4 different families namely Polycarboxylate Ether (PCE), Lignosulphate (LS), Sulfonated Naphthalene Formaldehyde (SNF) and Sulfonated Melamine Formaldehyde (SMF) are used. Two different brands of SP's are taken from each family. Workability study on the superplasticized mortar with cement to sand ratio 1:1.5 and water cement ratio of 0.4 was performed using marsh cone and flow table test and workability study on the concrete with same cement/sand ratio and water cement ratio was done using slump cone and flow table test. Saturation dosage of superplasticizer in mortar and concrete determined experimentally was compared to study the correlation between two. Compressive strength study on concrete cubes were done on concrete mixes with a superplasticizer dosage corresponding to the saturation dosage and a comparative study were done to analyse the improvement in the compressive strength with addition of superplasticizer from different family.