Experimental Study on Strength Characteristics of Self Curing Concrete with Cement Replacement by Fly Ash

Curing is an important process in construction. It regulates the strength properties of concrete. More water (with the domestic usage quality)is required for the curing process in construction. Large quantity of water is required in construction only in the curing stage. During the curing process, large amount of water is wasted as evaporation. Scarcity of water around the globe gives insufficient quantity and inefficient quality of water for domestic purpose. In this situation, water for curing purpose is a joke. For this many experiments are done on self curing concrete. Self curing agents like polyethylene glycol etc., is used in concrete. These agents retard the water loss from concrete, so that sufficient amount of water (poured at the time of mixing of concrete) is retarded and sufficient for curing of concrete in later stages. Polyethylene Glycol-400 is used in this experiment as a self curing agent. It is a harmless polymer and easily available in laboratory chemical suppliers and its effectiveness is very high even in the small quantities. The effectiveness of PEG-400 is high up to 0.5% of weight of cement. Many experiments are done on conventional concrete to convert into self curing concrete without any replacement of fly ash. Now-a-days fly ash is used as a cement substitute. The objective of the present experimental study is to analyse the possibility of using fly ash in the place of cement in self curing concrete up to 30% (because is code-10262:2009 gives fly ash replacement in concrete up to 20%). This experimental study was carried out on the three mixes-conventional mix, self curing concrete mix with PEG-400 (0.3%of weight of cement as constant),self curing concrete with replacement of cement by fly ash up to 30% with PEG-400 (at 0.3% of weight of cement is taken as constant). The obtained results are describing the comparisons between the strength characteristics of the conventional concrete specimen with curing, self curing concrete with no fly ash without curing and self curing concrete with fly ash ( in place of cement upto30%by weight) without curing. These results are taken at constant proportions of self curing agent, i.e.PEG-400 (0.3% by weight of cement).