CE 803 - LECTURE 1

INTRODUCTION TO CONCRETE

MILITARY COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

RISALPUR
 FACTS
Annual global production of concrete is about 5 billion cubic
yards. (Source: Cement Association of Canada)

Twice as much concrete is used in construction around the world

than the total of all other building materials, including wood, steel,
plastic and aluminum. (Source: Cement Association of Canada)

Global production of cement in 2000 was 1.56 billion tones. One

third of this was produced in China alone. (Source: USGS Minerals
Information. Cement Statistics 2000).

An estimated 600 million tonnes of fly ash was produced in the
world in 2000.(Source: Concrete International May 1999)
Lafarge Canada, estimates 25% of the cement in the average
concrete mix is replaced by fly ash in the Vancouver region.
WHAT IS CONCRETE ?
 WHAT IS CONCRETE ?

ASTM C 125 (Standard Definition of Terms Relating to Concrete

and Concrete Aggregates), and ACI Committee 116 (A Glossary of
Terms in the Field of Cement and Concrete Technology):

Concrete is a composite material that consists essentially of a

binding medium within which are embedded particles or fragments
of aggregate. In hydraulic cement concrete, the binder is formed
from a mixture of hydraulic cement and water.
CONCRETE TIME LINE
CONCRETE TIME LINE
 QUESTION IS …

Concrete is neither as strong nor as tough as

steel, so why is it the most widely used
engineering material?
 ANSWER IS …
 Concrete possesses excellent resistance to water.
 Ability of concrete to withstand the action
of water without serious deterioration
makes it an ideal material for building
structures to control, store, and transport
water.
 Structural elements exposed to moisture,
such as piles, foundations, footings, floors,
beams, columns, roofs, exterior walls, and
pipes, are frequently built with reinforced
and pre stressed concrete.
 ANSWER IS …
 The ease with which structural concrete
elements can be formed into a variety of shapes
and sizes.
 Plastic consistency of freshly made
concrete.
 This enables the material to flow into
prefabricated formwork.
 After a number of hours when the concrete
has solidified and hardened to a strong
mass, the formwork can be removed for
reuse.
 ANSWER IS …
 the cheapest and most readily available
material on the job. The principal components for
making concrete, namely aggregate, water, and
portland cement are relatively inexpensive and
are commonly available in most parts of the
world.
 Concrete does not corrode, needs no surface
treatment, and its strength increases with time;
therefore, require much less maintenance.
 The fire resistance of concrete is perhaps the
most important single aspect of structural safety.
 Allowable concrete stresses limited to about
50 % of ultimate strength- the fatigue strength of
concrete is generally not a problem.
CONSTITUENT MATERIALS OF
CONCRETE
 AGGREGATE
 Aggregate is the granular material, such as sand, gravel, crushed
stone, crushed blast-furnace slag, or construction and demolition
waste that is used with a cementing medium to produce either
concrete or mortar.
 Coarse aggregate - particles larger than 4.75 mm (No. 4 sieve),
 Fine aggregate - particles smaller than 4.75 mm but larger than
75 μm (No. 200 sieve).
 PORTLAND CEMENT
Cement is a finely pulverized, dry material that by itself is not a
binder but develops the binding property as a result of hydration
(i.e., from chemical reactions between cement minerals and
water).
 A cement is called hydraulic when the hydration products are
stable in an aqueous environment e.g., Portland Cement
 WATER
The water content and the minerals and chemicals dissolved in it
are crucial to achieving quality concrete.
 ADMIXTURES
Admixtures are defined as materials other than aggregates, cement,
and water, which are added to the concrete batch immediately
before or during mixing.

 Chemical admixtures can :

modify the setting and hardening characteristic of the cement paste
by influencing the rate of cement hydration;
Water-reducing admixtures can plasticize fresh concrete mixtures
by reducing the surface tension of water;
air-entraining admixtures can improve the durability of concrete
exposed to cold weather.

 Mineral admixtures such as pozzolans (materials containing

reactive silica) can reduce thermal cracking in mass concrete.
TYPES OF CONCRETE
GOOD UNIFORM CONCRETE ?

Concrete Making is both a SCIENCE and an ART

PROPERTIES OF HARDENED
CONCRETE
 PROPERTIES
Traditionally, the deformation occurring as a result of applied load
is expressed as strain - which is defined as the change in length per
unit length.

The load is expressed as stress - which is defined as the force per

unit area.

Depending on how the stress is acting on the material, the stresses

are further distinguished from each other: for example,
compression, tension, flexure, shear, and torsion.

The stress-strain relationships in materials are generally expressed

in terms of strength, elastic modulus, ductility, and toughness.
MODERN MARVELS OF CONCRETE
MATERIAL AND TECHNOLOGY
3 GORGES DAM – A WONDER
 The Three Gorges Dam in China is the
worlds largest concrete structure,
consuming 35 million cubic yards of
concrete!
 It has is the largest hydro-power station
in the world with an annual energy output
of 84.7 billion kilowatt-hours.
The power generated by the 34 generators
is enormous. It is equivalent to burning 25
million tons of crude oil or 50 million tons
of coal.
 It took 14 years to build this dam and
was opened in 2008.
 The concrete and steel dam is 7,661 feet
long, almost 600 feet high and used about
510,000 tons of steel – enough to build
the Eiffel Tower sixty times.
BURJ KHALIFA – A WONDER
 Tallest man made structure - 828 m high
162 floors
 Took 6 years to construct.
 All latest technologies in design,
analysis, materials and construction
technology were used.
 Foundation is a master piece in itself.
 Burj halifa's construction used 330,000
m3 (431,600 cu yd) of concrete and 55,000
tonnes of steel rebar.
 Construction took 22 million man-hours.
 Concrete was pumped to a world record
delivery height of 606 m (1,988 ft), the
156th floor.
Reinforced concrete acts as the backbone
of the structure. High Performance concrete
was used through out.
 CONCRETE FOR ART

Fountain of Time
A massive 120 by 18 by 14 ft (36 by 5 by 4 m) work of art in concrete on the south side
of the University of Chicago campus. The sculpture is a larger-than-life representation of
100 individual human figures, all cast in place in the exposed aggregate finish.
In the words of Steiger, the central figure is Time the conqueror, seated on an armored
horse and surrounded by young and old, soldiers, lovers, religious practitioners, and many
more participants in the diversity of human life, finally embracing death with outstretched
arms.
Lorado Taft made the model for this sculpture in 1920 after 7 years of work.
 CONCRETE FOR ART

Fountain of Time
About the choice of concrete as a medium of art, the builder of the sculpture, John J.
Earley, had this to say: “Concrete as an artistic medium becomes doubly interesting when
we realize that in addition to its economy it possesses those properties which are the most
desirable of both metal and stone.”

“Concrete, treated as in the Fountain of Time, presents a surface almost entirely of

stone with all its visual advantages while at the same time offering the precision of
casting that would otherwise only be attained in metal.”
 CONCRETE MATERIALS
“People do dispute this, but I would say the water: cement ratio for
complete hydration was 0.32, but to get the strength you don’t need
to have complete hydration. We are going down to a ratio of 0.16,
with admixtures, and that gives higher strength than a completely
hydrated system. The only thing preventing us from going below
that is the workability of the concrete. More efficient chemical
admixtures may allow us to.”
Marios Soutsos
 CONCRETE MATERIALS

“ Admixtures of the future will actively interfere with

the hydration processes, and ideally control these processes in terms
of reaction rate, and in terms of the composition and ideally the
morphology of hydration products. This will be the quantum leap
everybody is trying to achieve. I’d say, on a five to 10 year basis, we
might be able to fundamentally change the properties of concrete on
a nanoscale.”
Hübsch