Nowadays, concrete is a significant infrastructure material. It contributes to disaster prevention, mitigation, and creating a safe, secure, and comfortable society. But, if not used correctly, it may deteriorate prematurely. Thereby it can cause damage to the lives of citizens due to collapse and flaking.
Concrete is a stone-like mass of sand and gravel that is hardened with a binder that is a mixture of cement and water. Concrete is used for a diversity of purposes. The characteristics of concrete are changed according to various uses and situations.
Indeed, each purpose of use concrete has varieties of concrete, so you have needed knowledge about types of concrete. That’s why the article will explain some typical types of concrete, including their characteristics. For cement and aggregate, which are necessary materials for concrete, refer to the following or click here.
Ordinary concrete:
Ordinary concrete is the most common type of concrete. It is often used as concrete for building structures and concrete for civil engineering structures. This type of concrete is used by solidifying it in a very soft state.
Therefore, after stirring the concrete with a mixer, it is necessary to perform a slump test to confirm its softness. By completing a slump test and checking the softness in this way, ordinary concrete can be used with peace of mind.
Specific gravity is the ratio of the mass of a substance to the mass of the same volume of water at a water temperature of 4 ° C. One of the characteristics of ordinary concrete is that it is resistant to compressive force. It is strong against compressive strength but weak against pulling force.
Lightweight concrete:
Lightweight concrete is concrete with a smaller specific density than ordinary concrete. It is rarely used as a structure, but it may be used for finishes that do not require strength. For lightweight concrete, the following will be helpful.
Indeed, it is not made lighter by using lightweight aggregate but is made lighter by mixing many air bubbles. Lightweight concrete mixed with air bubbles is sometimes called air bubble concrete or foam concrete, in addition to being called lightweight concrete.
Although lightweight concrete has many merits, “the number of ready-mixed concrete factories that can be manufactured is limited due to maintenance problems,” “the allowable shear stress is lower than that of ordinary concrete.” As a result, it is essential to choose a pump truck during construction.
High strength concrete:
High-strength concrete is concrete that is stronger than ordinary concrete. The characteristic of high-strength concrete is that it uses less cement and less water, so it has high strength and durability.
In this way, it is often used for bridges and high-rise condominiums due to its strength. Although it is such high-strength concrete, the material is not much different from that of ordinary concrete.
Fluidized concrete:
Fluidized concrete is mixed with a fluidizing agent (high-performance water reducing agent) to make it easier to install without changing the unit water amount or unit cement amount. Fluidized concrete is used in high-rise buildings and precast factory products.
When manufacturing fluidized concrete, some precautions are following given.
1. Choose a factory with a short transportation time.
2. Use a stock solution for the fluidizing agent.
3. Measure the fluidizing agent accurately.
The points to be noted when constructing fluidized concrete are “to shorten the time until the end of driving after fluidization,” “length of stacking time,” and “sufficient compaction.”
Watertight concrete:
Watertight concrete is concrete used for parts affected by water pressure, such as aquariums and pools. Concrete is originally a highly watertight material. But water permeability is reduced by making the coarse bone material larger and limiting the water-cement ratio.
Pavement concrete:
When you think of pavement, you think of asphalt, but concrete also has concrete for pavement. The reason for using concrete for pavement is that it is durable, has a long life, and requires low maintenance costs.
Pavement concrete has a smaller unit water volume than ordinary concrete and is hard-mixed concrete with a slump value of 2.5 to 5.0 cm. Since paved concrete has a broad slump, it may be necessary to transport it using a dump truck depending on the specified slump value.
