Concrete Technology Dr.

Eethar Thanon Dawood

http://livedna.net/?dna=964.297

Composition of concrete; Functions of the paste and aggregate, general

properties of ordinary concrete.

Concrete is a composite construction material, composed of

cement (commonly Portland cement) and other cementitious materials such
as fly ash and slag cement, aggregate (generally a coarse aggregate made of
gravel or crushed rocks such as limestone, or granite, plus a fine aggregate
such as sand), water and chemical admixtures.

Concrete is widely used for a number of reasons:

1- Concrete Possesses excellent resistance to water.

a. The use of concrete in dams, canals, water pipes, storage tanks,
among others, is a common sight almost everywhere in the world.
b. Concrete is durable to some aggressive water.
c. Structural elements exposed to moisture such as : piles,
foundations, footing, floors, beams, columns, roofs, exterior walls
and pavements are frequently built with concrete reinforced with
steel.
2- The ease with which structural concrete elements can be formed into
a variety of shapes and sizes. This is due to a plastic consistency of
freshly made concrete, which permits the materials to flow into
fabricated formwork.
3- The cheapest and most readily available materials.
a. Main ingredients (Portland cement and aggregates) are
inexpensive, more commonly available in most area of the world.
b. Production of concrete requires less energy compared to most
other engineering materials.
c. Large amounts of many industrial wastes can be used as a
substitute for the cementitious materials and aggregate in
concrete.
 Therefore, in the future, the considerations of energy and resource
conservation make the choice of concrete as a structural material
even more attractive.

Definitions

Binder: It’s a mixture of hydraulic cement and water.

Aggregate: it’s granular materials such as: Fine aggregate, sand,
coarse aggregate, gravel, crushed stone, among others.
Fine aggregate: Particles smaller than 4.75 mm but larger than
75 µm.
Sand: fine aggregate resulting from natural disintegration and
abrasion of rocks or processing of friable sandstone.
Coarse aggregate: Particles larger than 4.75 mm.
Gravel: Coarse aggregate resulting from natural disintegration and
abrasion of rocks or processing of weakly bound conglomerate.
Crushed stone: Product resulting from industrial crushing of rocks.
Mortar: A mixture of sand, cement and water.
Admixtures: Materials other than aggregate, cement and water,
which are added to the concrete batch immediately before or during
mixing.

Cement: Material with adhesive and cohesive properties which make

it capable of bonding mineral fragments into a compact whole.
The cements of interest in the making of concrete have the property of
setting and hardening under water by virtue of a chemical reaction
with it and are, therefore called hydraulic cements.
Hydraulic cements consist mainly of silicates and aluminates of lime
and can be classified broadly as natural cements, Portland cements,
and high -alumina cements.
History
Concrete has been used for construction in many ancient structures.
During the Roman Empire, Roman concrete was made
from quicklime, pozzolana and an aggregate of pumice. Its widespread use
in many Roman structures, a key event in the history of architecture termed
the Roman Architectural Revolution, freed Roman construction from the
restrictions of stone and brick material and allowed for revolutionary new
designs in terms of both structural complexity and dimension.

Hadrian's Pantheon in Rome is an example of Roman concrete construction.

Concrete, as the Romans knew it, was a new and revolutionary material.
Laid in the shape of arches, vaults and domes, it quickly hardened into a
rigid mass, free from many of the internal thrusts and strains that trouble the
builders of similar structures in stone or brick.
Modern tests show that Roman concrete had as much compressive strength
as modern Portland-cement concrete (ca. 200 kg/cm2). However, due to the
absence of steel reinforcement, its tensile strength was far lower and its
mode of application was also different:
Modern structural concrete differs from Roman concrete in two important
details. First, its mix consistency is fluid and homogeneous, allowing it to be
poured into forms rather than requiring hand-layering together with the
placement of aggregate, which, in Roman practice, often consisted of rubble.
Second, integral reinforcing steel gives modern concrete assemblies great
strength in tension, whereas Roman concrete could depend only upon the
strength of the concrete bonding to resist tension.

References

1. A. M. Neville “Properties of concrete”, Longman House,

England, 1995.
2. ASTM C11. " Standard Terminology Relating to Gypsum and
Related Building Materials and Systems" Annual book of
ASTM standard; 2002.
3. Lancaster, Lynne. Concrete Vaulted Construction in Imperial
Rome. Innovations in Context. Cambridge University
Press. ISBN 978-0-511-16068-4, 2005.
4. Dawood E. T. & Ramli M. "Flowable high-strength system as
repair material", Structural Concrete Journal of fib; 11(4), 2010,
pp.199-09.
Concrete Technology Dr. Eethar Thanon Dawood
http://livedna.net/?dna=964.297

Concrete making materials-Portland Cement-Basic constitutes of cement,

Chemical formulas and processes.

Manufacture of Portland cement

Portland cement is made mainly from calcareous materials such as limestone

or chalk and from alumina and silica found as clay or shale. Raw materials
for the manufacture of Portland cement are found in nearly all countries and
cement plants operate all over the world.

The process of manufacture of cement consist essentially of grinding the raw

materials, mixing them intimately in certain proportions and burning in a
large rotary kiln at a temperature of 1450 ºc when the materials sinters are
formed as balls which are called as clinker.

The clinker is cooled and ground to a fine powder, with some gypsum
added, and the resulting product is the commercial Portland cement used
widely throughout the world.

Some details of the manufacture of cement are given in Fig.1.

The mixing and grinding of the raw materials can be done either in water or
in dry condition; hence the name ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ processes. The actual
methods of manufacture depend also on the hardness of the raw materials
used and on their moisture content.

Wet process

The wet process might be started when the chalk is used. It is finely broken
up and dispersed in water in a washmill. This is a circular pit with revolving
radial arms carrying rakes which break up the lumps of solid matter. The
clay is also broken up and mixed with water, usually in a similar washmill.
The two mixtures are now pumped so as to mix in proportions and pass
through a series of screen. The resulting cement slurry flows into storage
tanks. When limestone is used, it has to be blasted, then crushed, usually in
two smaller crushes, and then fed into a ball mill with the clay dispersed in
water. The process of changing the limestone into the fineness of the flour is
completed, and the resultant slurry is pumped into storage tanks.

The slurry is a liquid of creamy consistency, with a water content

of between 35 and 50 percent, and only a small fraction of materials-about
2 percent- larger than a 90 µm. The slurry is kept into storage tanks. Final
adjustment in order to achieve the required chemical composition can be
made by blending slurries from different storage tanks.

Finally, the slurry with the desired lime content passes into the rotary kiln.
This is a larger, refractory-lined steel cylinder up to 8 m in diameter, as long
as 230 m, slowly rotating about its axis. The slurry is fed in at upper end
while pulverized coal or natural gas is blown in by air blast at the lower end
of the kiln, where the temperature reaches about 1450 ºc.

The slurry, in its movement down the kiln, encounters a progressively higher
temperature. At first, the water is driven off and the CO2 is liberated. Further
on, the dry material undergoes a series of chemical reactions. In the hottest
part of the kiln, some 20 to 30 percent of the material becomes liquid, and
lime, silica and alumina recombined. The mass then fuses into balls, 3 to
25 mm in diameter, known as clinker. On exit from the kiln, the clinker is
cooled. The cool clinker, which is characteristically black and hard, is
interground with gypsum in order to prevent flash setting of the cement. The
grinding is done in a ball mill consisting of steel balls. The cement
discharged by the mill is passed through a separator, fine particles are being
removed to the storage silo by an air current, while the coarser particles are
passed through the mill once again.

Because the manufacture of cement by the wet process is energy intensive,

new wet-process plants are no longer built.

Dry and semi-dry processes

The raw materials are crushed and fed in the correct proportions into a
grinding mill, where they are dried and reduced in size to a fine powder. The
dry powder, called raw meal, is then pumped to a blending silo and final
adjustment is now made in the proportions of the materials required for the
manufacture of cement. To obtain a uniform mixture, the raw meal is
blended, usually by means of compressed air inducing an upward movement
of the powder and decreasing its apparent density.

In the semi-dry process, the blended meal is now sieved and fed into a
rotating dish called a granulator, water weighing about 12 percent of the
meal being added at the same time. In this manner, hard pellets about 15 mm
in diameter are formed.

The pellets are baked hard in pre-heating grate by means of hot gases from
the kiln. The pellets then enter the kiln, and subsequent operations are the
same as wet process of manufacture. Since the moisture content of the
pellets is only 12 percent as compared with the 40 percent moisture content
of the slurry used in the wet process, the semi-dry process kiln is
considerably smaller. The amount of heat required is also very much lower
because only 12 percent of moisture has to be driven off, but additional heat
has already been used in removing the original moisture content of the raw
materials (usually 6 to 10 percent). The process is thus quite economical, but
only when the raw materials are comparatively dry.

In the dry process, the raw meal, which has a moisture content of about
0.2 percent, is passed through a pre-heater. The raw meal is heated to about
800 ºc before being fed into the kiln. Because the raw meal contains no
moisture to be driven off and because it is already pre-heated, the kiln can be
shorter than in wet process.

The major part of the raw meal can be passed through a fluidized calciner
introduced between the pre-heater and the kiln. The temperature in the
fluidized calciner is about 820 ºc. This temperature is stable so that the
calcination is uniform and the efficiency of the heat exchange is high. The
effect of the fluidized calciner is to increase the decarbonation of the raw
meal prior to entry into the kiln and thus greatly to increase the kiln
throughput. It should be stressed that all processes require an intimate
mixture of the raw materials and a uniform distribution of materials is
essential to ensure a uniform product.
The processes of the productions of the clinker and cement are the same as
mentioned in wet process.

The cement produced is packed in bags or drums. A standard bag in the

United Kingdom contains 50 kg of cement, whereas a US sack weighs
94 Ib (42.6 kg).

Except when the raw materials necessitate the use of the wet process, the dry
process is used nowadays in order to minimize the energy required for
burning.

Typically, the burning process represents 40 to 60 percent of the production

cost, while the extraction of raw materials for the manufacture of cement
represents only 10 percent of the total cost of cement.

Clinker Ball mill

References

1. A. M. Neville “Properties of concrete”, Longman House,

England, 1995.
2. P. C. Hewlett (Ed)Lea's Chemistry of Cement and Concrete: 4th
Ed, Arnold, 1998, ISBN 0-340-56589-6, Chapter 1.