Effect of In-Situ Curing on Compressive Strength of Reactive Powder Concrete

Abstract

A development of Reactive Powder Concrete (RPC) currently is the use of quartz powder as a stabilizing agent with the content to cement ratio of 30% and steam curing method in an autoclave temperature of 250ºC which produced a high compressive strength of 180 MPa. That RPC can be generated due to one reason for using the technique of steam curing in an autoclave in the laboratory. This study proposes in-situ curing method in order the curing can be applied in the field and with a reasonable compressive strength results of RPC. As the benchmarks in this study are the curing methods in laboratory that are steam curing of 90°C for 8 hours (C1), and water curing for 28 days (C2). For the in-situ curing methods that are covering with tarpaulins and flowed steam of 3 hours per day for 7 days (C3), covering with wet sacks for 28 days (C4), and covering with wet sacks for 28 days for specimen with unwashed sand as fine aggregate (C5). The comparison of compressive strength of the specimens in this study showed compressive strength of RPC with in-situ steam curing (101.64 MPa) close to the compressive strength of RPC with steam curing in the laboratory with 8.2% of different. While in-situ wet curing compared with the water curing in laboratory has the different of 3.4%. These results indicated that the proposed in-situ curing methods are reasonable good in term of the compressive strength that can be achieved.