Comparison of Mechanical Properties of Concretes under Various Curing Regimes

Concrete is a material that can be affected seriously by different curing regimes. Although, water curing is the preferred one, in practice this cannot always be possible and all types of curing application are actually omitted. This results in reducing of the durability and the strength of concrete which affects the life of structure seriously. Therefore, in this study, various concrete classes that will be designed by two different mix design methods such as BRE (Building Research Establishment) and ACI (American Concrete Institute). Concrete samples produced by two different methods were cured at three different curing conditions until testing age of 7 days and 28 days. Three curing conditions were decided to be water curing (in curing tank), laboratory in-room curing, and natural outside curing. Concretes produced were tested for fresh mix properties such as slump, Ve-Be, air content, temperature variation of fresh mix, etc. and hardened mix properties after curing such as compression, tension, flexural strength, and non-destructive tests such as hammer and UPV. Concrete classes were designed to be: C16/20, C20/25, C25/30, C35/45, and C40/50. It can be concluded from this study that water and temperature play significant role in strength gain at early age and at long term (28 days) age. Almost for all concrete classes concretes cured in water tank gave strength 10.21% higher than concretes cured in laboratory conditions and 18.9% higher than concretes left outside under natural environmental conditions. Keywords: Curing, Strength, Mix design, Fresh mix, Non-Destructive, Compressive, Flexural, Splitting, Water, Temperature.