Importance of Correct Proportion in Concrete Pastes

Concrete is widely used in the construction industry. To put it simply, it is a mixture of paste and aggregates. The paste is composed of cement and water and the aggregates used could both be fine and coarse or large in dimension. A chemical process called hydration helps the paste to harden and gain strength to metamorphose into a rock-like mass called concrete in course of time. Initially, that is when it is newly mixed the paste remains soft and malleable. Gradually, as it dries up it gets hardened and becomes immensely strong and durable. It is because of this peculiar property, it is conveniently used to construct bridges, skyscrapers, sidewalks, houses, dams and superhighways, etc.

Interestingly, concretes can exhibit different properties depending on its compositions. Mixing water to cement, chemical admixtures and aggregates leads to primary construction materials for buildings. These concrete and cement standards allow laboratories all over the world to conduct testing and evaluation of the concrete mixtures to verify their strength and safety. As such, cement aggregate concrete testing is a common phenomenon practiced across the construction industry.

The testing and evaluation procedure mentioned above proves helpful to identify various properties of concrete like strength, elasticity, hardness and functionality. Any seasoned professional involved with the building and construction industry knows the importance of right proportion for a concrete paste. A mixture that lacks enough paste to fill the voids between the aggregates proves difficult to place and comes up with rough surface and porous concrete. On the other hand, mixture having excess of cement paste is easy to place and comes up with smooth surface. However, it proves to be more costly and is prone to get cracked.

Thanks to the dedicated effort of construction materials testing company in Singapore, task has become less cumbersome and less complicated for project owners, contractors and technical experts associated to construction business. These testing entities depend largely on latest scientific breakthroughs and usually employ a string of scientists, engineers and other trained experts. These players undoubtedly provide impressive quality of service at much reasonable price.