Compressive Strengths of Concrete Formulated with Algerian Local Materials

Abstract

In the developed countries, concrete undergoes not only an improvement of its performance in both fresh and hardened states, but also a good control of the quality of its components. This is not the case in most of the building sites in our country. The factors affecting the quality of concrete during its production and implementation are numerous. Due to this fact, we aim to study the influence of the nature of the components on the mechanical property of the mixture, in particular the compressive strength which remains, for the engineer, the most significant property of material, if one excludes the indicators of durability (Mounanga et al., 2006). For this purpose, an extensive experimental program is conducted in our laboratory where more than 1500 cylindrical specimens 16x32 cm, using local materials, are tested. The mixtures are obtained using the Dreux-Gorisse’s method and the cure of the specimens is done both out in the open and immersed in water. We show on the one hand, that the intrinsic properties of the components of the studied concrete and particularly the broken up particles, offer to the concrete complete satisfactory resistances and on the other hand, the cement proportioning for the selected class does not offer notable differences as regards to compressive strengths. The whole experimental results obtained constituted a data bank. The latter enabled us to establish an abacus of formulation the use of which appears easy.