You have no items in your shopping cart.
ABSTRACT
Cement and concrete are the most important engineering materials in the construction industry. Concreting under hot environmental conditions can have adverse effect on the properties of concrete especially when batching plant is far from the construction site. Hence retarder admixtures are used on concrete to avoid cold joint in such a case. This experimental work involves the use of sugar as a retarder admixture for concrete and its effect of sugar on the setting time, strength and durability of concrete made from grade 42.5 of cement in Nigeria. The mix adopted for the experimentation was 1:1.5:3 with w/c ratio of 0.47 and sugar was added to the concrete at percentages of 2, 4, 6, 8, 10and 15. Slump test was conducted for all the batches to check its workability. All the specimens were water cured and crushed for 7 days, 14 days and 28days. The compressive strength specimens were of dimension 100 x 100 x 100mm. Setting time of the concrete was also checked using vicat's apparatus After 28 days the maximum compressive strength was experienced at 0.06 percentage by weight of cement of sugar giving 45.33 N/mm2 which is about 17.2% increase to that of control sample. Also, at 0.06 percentage by weight of cement of sugar in concrete, there is delay in initial setting time by 80 minutes. The setting time of concrete increases with increase the percentage of sugar up to 10 percentage by weight of cement. Beyond 10 percentage by weight of cement use of sugar, it is found that the both initial and final setting times drastically reduces thus reversing its properties as a retarder. Also, the workability of concrete increases at increase in dosage of sugar in concrete.
