Effects of Different Water and Super Plasticizer Amount, Pre-Setting and Curing Regimes on the Behavior of Reactive Powder Concrete

Reactive Powder Concrete (RPC) is an ultra high performance concrete which has superior mechanical and physical properties. The RPC is composed of cement and very fine powders such as crushed quartz (100–600 μm) and silica fume with very low water/binder ratio (W/B) (less than 0.20) and Super Plasticizer (SP). The RPC has a very high compressive and tensile strength with better durability properties than current high performance concretes. Application of very low water/binder ratio with a high dosage of super plasticizer, different heat curing processes and pre-setting pressure improve mechanical and physical properties of RPC. In this study, the RPC is composed of available materials in Iran. Two different mixing proportions, different water/binder ratios for preparation of samples, different super plasticizer dosages, five different (0, 25, 50, 100 and 150 MPa) pre-setting pressure and 7 different curing regimes were used in samples preparation and experiments. Results showed that appropriate water/binder ratio and super plasticizer dosage, higher temperature and pre-setting pressure increase the workability, density and compressive strength of compositions.