ACCELERATING ADMIXTURE “RAPIDITE”-ITS EFFECT ON PROPERTIES OF CONCRETE

This paper aims to investigate the effect of use of Rapidite in cold weather concreting. In order to illustrate such effect, a series of laboratory tests were conducted. Workability tests, compressive strength tests, flexural tests and split tensile strength tests were carried out on concrete specimens having different percentage of Rapidite and the results thus obtained were compared with those of normal concrete. The results indicated that all the three strength parameters viz, compressive strength, split tensile strength and flexural tensile strength of concrete increase when compared with plain one. The increase in strength reaches the maximum value at the Rapidite percentage of 1.5%, beyond which it starts decreasing. The increase in 7 day strength is much higher than increase in 28 day strength. Further adding Rapidte has shown increase in the workability of mix with respect to the plain mix.