BEHAVIOR AND DURABILITY OF HIGH AND ULTRA HIGH STRENGTH CONCRETE MANUFACTURED BY LOCAL MATERIALS

Abstract

Concrete has undergone rapid and phenomenal development in recent decades. Today, new classes of concretes (i.e., high strength, very high strength and ultra high strength concretes) has been manufactured and transferred from laboratory research to practical application. These concretes are used increasingly and replaced normal strength concrete in many structural applications. Although the mechanical properties and durability of normal strength concrete has been well evaluated, these properties of the new classes of concretes as well as the relationship between the compressive strength and other mechanical properties as well as the durability of concrete are not well identified. In this paper, different classes of concrete with a wide range of compressive strength (250 to 1000 kg/cm2) are manufactured using local materials and their mechanical properties as well as their durability-related properties are determined. Furthermore, the mathematical relationships between the compressive strength and other properties are developed using statistical methods. The experimental results showed that it is possible to produce concrete with compressive strength in excess of 1000 kg/cm2 using local materials in Egypt. Furthermore, the suggested mathematical equations can be used to derive the properties of concrete based on its compressive strength.