Cement Concrete

The cement concrete is a mixture of cement, sand, pebbles or crushed rock and water, which, when placed in the skeleton of forms and allowed to cure, becomes hard like a stone. The cement concrete has attained the status of a major building material in all branches of modern construction because of the following reasons;

(1) It can be readily moulded into durable structural items of various sizes and shapes at practically no considerable labour expenditure.

(2) It is possible t control the properties of cement concrete within a wide range by using appropriate ingredients and by applying special processing techniques – mechanical, chemical and physical.

(3) It is possible to mechanise completely its preparation and placing processes.

(4) It possesses adequate plasticity for the mechanical working.

In this chapter, the salient features of this important engineering material will be briefly discussed.