Properties of a High Performance Concrete manufactured with a conventional production process

Among cement-based composites, materials that show a growing interest are the High Performance Concrete (HPC) and Ultra-hi-gh Performance Concrete (UHPC), which are categorized by an effective screening of granular elements, and an elevated quantity of fiber reinforcement 1. HPC is produced through the particle packing methodology to enhance its matrix density and reduce its porosity 2. Because of this producing me-thod, this material has a lower water content than conventional concrete, and better me-chanical performance and durability 3-5. It is thus suitable to build several structural elements 6, 7 thanks to its enhanced pro-perties. On the other hand, the manufacture of HPC is not straightforward: expensive raw materials, impact on the environment, labo-rious fabrication and curing tasks 8, 9 are among the most important obstacles to its large-scale use. It is therefore relevant and recommended to simplify its production process. This work present new HPC mixtu-res that are produced in a straightforward manner, without requiring elevated tempe-rature curing conditions, mixers with high power or temperature controlled chambers, as commonly used for current HPC sold in the market. The mixtures described here showed a split tensile strength of 5 MPa, a compressive strength of over 70 MPa, and a virtual packing density of 0.86.