MECHANICAL-PROPERTIES AND DURABILITY OF 2 INDUSTRIAL REACTIVE POWDER CONCRETES

Two reactive powder concretes (RPC) were produced on an industrial sca le at the Universite de Sherbrooke and in a nearby precast plant. A 2. 6 m(3) mix was prepared in a ready mix truck while a 1.35 m(3) mix was prepared in the central mixer of the precast plant. The ready mb RPC was sampled before and after the addition of steel fibers while the on e produced at the precast plant was sampled only at the end of the mir ing process. These RPCs were tested for compressive strength, modulus of elasticity, freezing and thawing cycling resistance, scaling resist ance to deicing sails, and resistance to chloride ion penetration. Lar ge samples,cere also cast allowing core samples to be taken. The resul ts show that a 200 MPa compressive strength could be achieved in both cases: after curing in hot water at 90 deg C or in the low pressure st eam chambers at the precast plant Confinement of the RPC in a steel tu be greatly increases its compressive strength and its ductility: The t wo mires were found to be freeze-thaw resistant and presented a eely l ow mass loss under the scaling test. Chloride ion permeability was bel ow 10 Coulombs even for the specimens containing steel fibers; this ex tremely low value translates to the quasi-impermeability of the two RP Cs.