Concrete Technology Book | Chapter 1: Concrete as a Structural Material
The reader of this book is presumably someone interested in the use of concrete in structures, be they bridges, buildings, highways, or dams. Our view is that, in order to use concrete satisfactorily, both the designer and the contractor need to be familiar with concrete technology. Concrete Technology is indeed the title of this book, and we ought to provide reasons for this need.
Today, there are two commonly used structural materials: concrete and steel. These two are sometimes complementary and sometimes competitive, allowing many structures of similar type and function to be built using either material. Yet, universities, polytechnics, and colleges teach much less about concrete than about steel. This would not matter in itself if it were not for the fact that, in actual practice, professionals in the field need to know more about concrete than about steel. This assertion will now be demonstrated.
Steel is manufactured under carefully controlled conditions, always in highly sophisticated plants. The properties of every type of steel are determined in a laboratory and described in the manufacturer’s certificate. Thus, the designer of a steel structure only needs to specify the steel that complies with the relevant standard, and the builder only needs to ensure that the correct steel is used and that connections between individual steel members are properly executed.
On a concrete building site, the situation is completely different. It is true that the quality of cement is guaranteed by the manufacturer in a manner similar to that of steel, and, provided a suitable cement is chosen, its quality is hardly ever a cause of faults in a concrete structure. But cement is not the building material: concrete is. Cement is to concrete what flour is to a fruit cake, and the quality of the cake depends on the cook.
It is possible to obtain concrete of specified quality from a ready-mix supplier, but even in this case, only the raw materials are bought. Transporting, placing, and, above all, compacting greatly influence the final product. Moreover, unlike steel, the choice of mixes is virtually infinite and therefore the selection cannot be made without a sound knowledge of the properties and behavior of concrete. Thus, the competence of the designer and the specifier determines the potential qualities of concrete, and the competence of the contractor and the supplier controls the actual quality of concrete in the finished structure. It follows that they must be thoroughly familiar with the properties of concrete and with concrete making and placing.
What is Concrete?
A general overview of concrete as a material is difficult at this stage because we must refrain from discussing specialized knowledge that has not yet been presented. Therefore, we have to limit ourselves to some selected features of concrete.
Concrete, in the broadest sense, is any product or mass made by the use of a cementing medium. Generally, this medium is the product of the reaction between hydraulic cement and water. However, these days, even such a definition covers a wide range of products: concrete is made with several types of cement and also contains pozzolan, fly ash, blast-furnace slag, microsilica, additives, recycled concrete aggregate, admixtures, polymers, fibers, and so on. These concretes can be heated, steam-cured, autoclaved, vacuum-treated, hydraulically pressured, shock-vibrated, extruded, and sprayed. This book is restricted to considering no more than a mixture of cement, water, aggregate (fine and coarse), and admixtures.
This immediately begs the question: what is the relationship between the constituents of this mixture? There are three possibilities. First, one can view the cementing medium, i.e., the products of cement hydration, as the essential building material, with the aggregate fulfilling the role of a cheap or cheaper diluent. Second, one can view the coarse aggregate as a sort of mini-masonry, which is joined together by mortar, i.e., a mixture of hydrated cement and fine aggregate. The third possibility is to recognize that, as a first approximation, concrete consists of two phases: hydrated cement paste and aggregate, and, as a result, the properties of concrete are governed by the properties of these two phases as well as by the presence of interfaces between them.
The second and third views each have some merit and can be used to explain the behavior of concrete. The first view, that of cement paste diluted by aggregate, should be discarded. Suppose you could buy cement more cheaply than aggregate – should you use a mixture of cement and water alone as a building material? The answer is emphatically no because the so-called “volume changes” of hydrated cement paste are far too large: shrinkage of neat cement paste is almost ten times larger than shrinkage of concrete with 250 kg of cement per cubic meter. Roughly the same applies to creep. Furthermore, the heat generated by a large amount of hydrating cement, especially in a hot climate, may lead to cracking. One can also observe that most aggregates are less prone to chemical attack than cement paste, even though the latter is itself fairly resistant. Therefore, quite independently of cost, the use of aggregate in concrete is beneficial.
Good Concrete
Beneficial means that the influence is good, and we could, indeed we should, ask the question: what is good concrete? It is easier to precede the answer by noting that bad concrete is, alas, a very common building material. By bad concrete, we mean a substance with the consistency of soup, hardening into a honeycombed, non-homogeneous, and weak mass, and this material is made simply by mixing cement, aggregate, and water. Surprisingly, the ingredients of good concrete are exactly the same, and the difference is due entirely to ‘know-how.’
With this ‘know-how,’ we can make good concrete, and there are two overall criteria by which it can be defined: it has to be satisfactory in its hardened state and also in its fresh state while being transported from the mixer and placed in the formwork. Very generally, the requirements in the fresh state are that the consistency of the mix is such that the concrete can be compacted by the means actually available on the job, and also that the mix is cohesive enough to be transported and placed without segregation by the available means. Clearly, these requirements are not absolute but depend on whether transportation is by a skip with a bottom discharge or by a flat-tray lorry, the latter, of course, not being a very good practice.
As far as the hardened state is considered, the usual requirement is a satisfactory compressive strength. We invariably specify strength because it is easy to measure, although the ‘number’ that comes out of the test is certainly not a measure of the intrinsic strength of concrete in the structure but only of its quality. Thus, strength is an easy way of ascertaining compliance with the specification and sorts out contractual obligations. However, there are also other reasons for the preoccupation with compressive strength, namely, that many properties of concrete are related to its compressive strength. These are: density, impermeability, durability, resistance to abrasion, resistance to impact, tensile strength, resistance to sulphates, and some others, but not shrinkage and not necessarily creep. We are not saying that these properties are a single and unique function of compressive strength, and we are aware of the issue of whether durability is best ensured by specifying strength, water-to-cement ratio, or cement content. But the point is that, in a very general way, concrete of higher strength has more desirable properties. A detailed study of all this is, of course, what concrete technology is all about.
Composite Materials (Composites)
We have referred to concrete as a two-phase material, and we should now consider this topic further, with special reference to the modulus of elasticity of the composite product. In general terms, a composite material consisting of two phases can have two fundamentally different forms. The first of these is an ideal composite hard material, which has a continuous matrix of an elastic phase with a high modulus of elasticity and embedded particles of a lower modulus. The second type of structure is that of an ideal composite soft material, which consists of elastic particles with a high modulus of elasticity embedded in a continuous matrix phase with a lower modulus.
The difference between the two cases can be large when it comes to calculating the modulus of elasticity of the composite. In the case of a composite hard material, it is assumed that the strain is constant over any cross-section, while the stresses in the phases are proportional to their respective moduli. This is illustrated on the left-hand side of Fig. 1.1. On the other hand, for composite soft materials, the modulus of elasticity is calculated based on the assumption that the stress is constant over any cross-section, while the strain in the phases is inversely proportional to their respective moduli; this is depicted on the right-hand side. The corresponding equations are:
where:
- EE = Elastic Modulus of the Composite Material,
- Em = Elastic Modulus of the Matrix Phase,
- Ep = Elastic Modulus of the Particle Phase,
- g = Volume Fraction of Particles.
We should not be deceived by the simplicity of these equations and conclude that the only thing we need to know is whether the modulus of elasticity of the aggregate is higher or lower than that of the paste. The fact is that these equations represent boundaries for the modulus of elasticity of the composite. With the practical random distribution of aggregate in concrete, neither boundary can be reached as neither satisfies the requirements of both equilibrium and compatibility. For practical purposes, a fairly good approximation is given by the expression for the composite soft material for mixes made with normal aggregates; for lightweight aggregate mixes, the expression for the composite hard material is more appropriate.
From a scientific point of view, there is more that should be said on the subject of the two-phase approach, and that is that we can apply it to the cement phase alone as a sort of second step. Cement paste can be viewed as consisting of hard grains of unhydrated cement in a soft matrix of hydration products. The hydration products, in turn, consist of ‘soft’ capillary pores in a hard matrix of cement gel. Appropriate equations can be readily written down, but for the present purpose, it is sufficient to note that hard and soft are relative, not absolute, terms.
Role of Interfaces
The properties of concrete are influenced not only by the properties of the constituent phases but also by the existence of their interfaces. To appreciate this, we should note that the volume occupied by properly compacted fresh concrete is slightly greater than the compacted volume of the aggregate contained in the concrete. This difference means that the aggregate particles are not in point-to-point contact but are separated from one another by a thin layer of cement paste, i.e., they are coated by the paste. The volumetric difference we have just referred to is typically 3 percent, sometimes more.
One corollary of this observation is that the mechanical properties of concrete, such as rigidity, cannot be attributed to the mechanical properties of the aggregate assembly but rather to the properties of individual aggregate particles and the matrix.
Another corollary is that the interface influences the modulus of elasticity of concrete. The significance of interfaces is elaborated in Chapter 6, and a figure in that chapter (Fig. 6.11) shows the stress-strain relations for aggregate, neat cement paste, and concrete. Here we have what at first blush seems like a paradox: aggregate alone exhibits a linear stress-strain relation, as does hydrated neat cement paste. But the composite material consisting of the two, i.e., concrete, has a curved relation. The explanation lies in the presence of the interfaces and the transition zone (Chapter 6) in the development of microcracking at these interfaces under load. These microcracks develop progressively at interfaces, forming varying angles with the applied stress, and therefore there is a progressive increase in local stress intensity and in the magnitude of strain. Thus, strain increases at a faster rate than the applied stress, and so the stress-strain curve continues to bend, exhibiting an apparently pseudo-plastic behavior.
Approach to Study of Concrete
The preceding presentation introduces, by necessity, many terms and concepts that may not be entirely clear to the reader. The best approach is to study the following chapters and then return to this one.
The order of presentation is as follows: first, the ingredients of concrete: cement, normal aggregate, and mixing water. Then, the concrete in its fresh state. The following chapter discusses the strength of concrete because, as already mentioned, this is one of the most important properties of concrete and one that is always prominent in specifications.
Having established how we make concrete and what we fundamentally require, we turn to some techniques: mixing and handling, use of admixtures to modify the properties at this stage, and methods of dealing with temperature problems.
In the following chapters, we consider the development of strength, strength properties other than compressive and tensile strengths, and behavior under stress. Next come the behavior in normal environments, durability, and, in a separate chapter, resistance to freezing and thawing.
Having studied the various properties of concrete, we turn to testing and conformity with specifications, and finally to mix design; after all, this is what we must be able to do in order to choose the right mix for the right job. Two chapters extend our knowledge to less common materials: lightweight concrete and special concretes. As a finale, we review the advantages and disadvantages of concrete as a structural material.
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