LE-4 The manufacture of concrete

LEARNING ELEMENT OBJECTIVES

After you have learned this element, you should be able to:
- explain how the density and final strength of the concrete is influenced by the proportions of the components;
- describe various mixtures for different types of concrete;
- say approximately how much concrete of various types can be produced with one bag of cement;
- describe how concrete is mixed by hand and by concrete mixer.
The final strength of the finished concrete depends on:
1. the proportions of the components (i.e. whether the correct quantities of gravel, sand, cement and water have been used);
2. the quality of the components;
3. the distribution of the grain sizes of the gravel and sand;
4. the way the components are mixed;
5. the way the mixture is transported, placed, compacted and cured.
Proportion of the components
When the mixture is prepared take care that:
1. the proportions of the aggregates used in the mixture are correct;
2. the right quantities of cement and water are added.
1

1
The water should be fresh and clean. If the only available water contains a lot of silt, it could be stored in drums to allow the silt to
settle on the bottom of the drum before use.
Sand and gravel contain particles of different sizes with empty spaces in between. Generally, you can assume that sand and gravel,
in a dry condition, consist of 60 per cent solid matter and 40 per cent empty spaces.
To obtain a dense concrete the empty spaces need to be filled. The empty spaces between the sand grains will be filled by the
cement while the sand-cement-water paste (mortar) will fill the empty spaces between the gravel particles.
An extra 10 per cent of mortar is necessary to coat the particles completely.
This means that for a certain quantity of gravel we would need 50 per cent wet mortar in order to fill the empty spaces and to coat
the particles. In theory, therefore, a mixture of 1:2:4 (cement: sand:gravel) will produce a dense concrete. In practice, when a dense
but plastic concrete is required, a mixture of 1:2:3 is often applied mainly because of the variation in the percentage of empty
spaces. However, we have already seen (LE-2) that different mixes can be used depending on the purpose for which the concrete is
used. Table 2 shows various mixtures producing different types of concrete (volumetric proportions).
Table 2:
Type of concrete Mixture
(cement:sand:gravel)
Purpose
Lean concrete 1 : 4 : 8 Culvert beds, fills
Mass concrete 1 : 3 : 6 Non-reinforced structures
Dense concrete 1 : 2 : 4 Culvert pipes, light reinforced structures
Dense, plastic concrete 1 : 2 : 3
1 : 1.5 : 3
Heavy reinforced structures
YOU SHOULD REMEMBER THAT THE ABOVE TABLE PROVIDES RULES OF THUMB ONLY.
If a very high quality concrete is required, laboratory tests must be carried out in order to determine the optimum granulometric
composition of each aggregate, i.e. what are the best proportions of particles of different sizes in a particular type of aggregate.
Remember that the volumes of cement and sand can vary with the degree they are compacted! In addition, the volume of sand
varies with its moisture content. For example, the volume of one kilogramme of sand increases by 15-50 per cent if the water
content is increased by 3-12 per cent. For these reasons, volumetric proportioning as shown in table 2 is never used when big
quantities of high quality concrete must be produced. In this case, the materials are weighed and the moisture content is
measured, so that the exact quantities of the different components (gravel, sand, cement and water) can be determined. For most
concrete works carried out on rural roads, however, the above rules of thumb can be applied.
Water/cement ratio
The quantity of water divided by the quantity of cement gives the water/cement ratio. The water/cement ratio varies between 0.4
and 0.5 for practically all types of concrete. This gives the minimum amount of water necessary to react with the cement and to
make the mixture workable. To ensure sufficient workability for hand-mixed and hand-placed concrete sometimes more water is
necessary (water/cement ratio between 0.5 and 0.65) but great care should be taken not to use too much water. The wetter the
mix, the weaker the finished concrete !
It is very important to remember that much more than 1 m
3
of components is required to produce 1 m
3
of concrete. This is easily
understood when we realise that the cement fills the empty spaces between the sand particles and the mortar fills the empty
spaces between the gravel particles. Table 3 shows the material required to produce one cubic metre of finished concrete.
Table 4 shows the approximate yield of concrete per bag of cement for the four different mixtures. The tables assume that one bag
of cement weighs 50 kg and has a volume of 40 litres.
Table 3: