Cement Users’ Guide MATERIALS FOR CONCRETE Cement Portland cement is a hydraulic binder and a finely ground inorganic material. When mixed with water, it forms a paste which sets and hardens by means of hydraulic reactions. India has made great strides in producing world class cement Types ‘There ae various types of cement in use and the latest revised edition of 1S 456:2000, fdian Standard code of practice for plain and reinforced concrete permits the use of 10 diffrent types of cement. These are described below. Ordinary portland cement Ordinary portland cement (OPC) is a product obtained by intimately mixing together calcareous (limestone, chalk, marl, ete) and argillaceous (clay, shale, ete) materials, with or without other ‘materials containing silica, alumina or iron oxide, burning them at a high temperature, and grinding the resulting intermediate product, clinker with gypsum, After burning, no material other than gypsum is added, Grades of OPC ‘The Bureau of Indian Standards has classified OPC into three grades for producing different grades of concrete to meet the demands of the construction industry. The classification is made on the basis of compressive strength at 28 days as: 33 grade ~ ordinary portland cement, 1S 269:1989 43 grade- ordinary portland cement, IS 8112:1989 53 grade - ordinary portland cement, IS 12269 : 1987. ‘The grade indicates compressive strength of the cement in N/mm? at 28 days. The basic physical and chemical propertics of the three grades of OPC are given in Table 1 Since higher grades of concrete necessitate the use of higher strengths of cement at 28 days, use of 33-grade cement has dropped during the last decade. Both 43 grade and 53 grade cement can be used for producing higher grades of conerete, Low alkali portland cement There is no separate standard for low alkali portland cement. But in regions where the aggregates have reactive silica or carbonates, alkalies in the cement are restricted to (0.6 percent of soda equivalent (Na20 + 0.658 K20) with a view to avoid the occurrence of alkali-aggregate reaction, leading to possible cracking and destruction of concrete. In such cases, instead of low alkali portland cement, blended cements can be used with added advantage. Blended cements Blended cements or composite cements are those cements in which a mineral additive has been added. to portland cement. Blended cement is a hydraulic cementitious product, similar to ordinary portland ‘coment, but due to the addition of blending material it has certain improved properties compared to OPC. Portland pozzolana cement (PPC) is manufactured either by grinding intimately together portland cement clinker, gypsum and @ pozzolana such as flyash, or by imimately and uniformly blending portland cement and fine pozzolana. The BIS has differentiated PPC based on the pozzolana added to the mix, Thus IS 1489 (Part 1) is portland pozzolana cement (flyash based). According to the latest 1