Engineering and Technology Journal

Abstract

High performance concrete, HPC, requires a low water-to-cementitious materials mass ratio w/cm and supplemental cementitious materials with silica fumes in the mixture, and use of a superplasticizer. Because of the low w/cm and rapid reaction at early ages, it becomes more difficult to provide curing water from the top surface and this water will be inadequate to satisfy the conventional curing. Therefore, there is a need to use internal curing that is supplied via internal materials, such as absorbent lightweight aggregate, which will be pre-saturated. The use of internal curing was investigated in this study by two ways. The first way was through the use of partial replacement of original coarse aggregate (gravel), meanwhile, the second was by replacing partiallythe original fine aggregate (sand)by crushed Porcelinite.The results showed that the fine Porcelinite replacement as internal curing material caused better enhancement instrengthof HPC than coarse Porcelinite. The replacement of original fine crushed Porcelinite caused an increase in compressive strength from 3.36 to 5.25percent, for splitting tensile strength from 5.48 to6.85 percent and for flexural strength from 11.76 to 12.74percent.