Comparability Study on the Effects of Curing Approaches on the Mechanical Behaviours of Reactive Powder Concrete

Abstract

Reactive Powder Concrete (RPC) is the most commonly used type, known as Ultra High-Performance Concrete (UHPC). This type of concrete requires very low water/binder ratios to ensure that the microstructure is very dense and impermeable. Thus, it also needs special types of curing to ensure its high strength, high durability, and dimensional stability. The main target of this study is thus a comparison of different curing regimes to investigate their impacts on the mechanical performance of RPC. Three different curing regimes, Normal Curing (NC), Steam Curing (SC), and Boiling Curing (BC) were thus adopted in this study. To assess the mechanical behaviour of RPC, compressive strength, direct tensile strength, and density measures were implemented for the different curing regimes and SC and BC were compared with normal curing at various curing ages. The investigation results revealed that, among the three different curing approaches, the steam curing method most significantly enhanced the mechanical behaviour of the RPC, particularly compressive strength.