Experimental Investigation and Statistical Analysis of Compressive and Tensile Strength of Reactive Powder Concrete (RPC) at Different Ages

Abstract

At present, certain types of concrete such as ultra high performance concrete (UHPC) provide some concrete properties such as high resistance. Reactive powder concrete (RPC) is one of the UHPC concrete with superior physical and mechanical properties. Reactive powder concrete is produced using cement and very fine powdered materials including crushed quartz, silica fume and low water-to-cement ratio using super plasticizer. In this study, a mixing scheme of RPC, in which water/binder ratio (W/B) is equal to 0.15 and the ratio of super plasticizer to cement (SP/C), is equal to 3%, with interest of the selection of native materials was determined. Subsequently, by performing several experiments, the compressive strength, rupture modulus and tensile strength of RPC have been investigated at different ages. In order to determine the resistance of RPC at different ages, samples with W/B and SP/C were made up to the mixing scheme and tested after 3, 7, 14, 28 and 56 days of normal operation. Each group consisted of six samples, and the mean values, standard deviation and coefficients of variations of the samples were determined. The relationships have been proposed to predict the compressive and tensile strength of reactive powder concrete in different ages, which are accurate and can be used in practice.

Keywords

• reactive powder concrete
• ultra high performance concrete
• compressive strength
• tensile strength
• super plasticizer