Relevant national standars.

It is also desirable for the purchaser,or for an independent laboratory,

to make periodic acceptance tests or to examine the properties of a cement to be used for some
special purpose. Tests on chemical composition are beyond the scope of this book and the reader
is referred to the Bibliography or to the relevant standards : ASTM C114-05 and BS EN 196-2 :1995
. Fineness tests seting times, soundness testes and strength tests as, prescribed by ASTM and BS
EN procedures , will now be briefly described.

FINENESS OF CEMENT

Since hydration starts at the surface of the cement particles , it the total suface area of cement
that represents the material available for hydration .

Thus, the rate of hydration depends on the fineness of cement particles, and for a rapid
development of strength a high fineness is necessary .

However,the cost of grinding and the effect of fineness on other properties,e.g. gypsum
requirement , workability of fresh concrete and long –term behavior,must be borne in mind .

Fineness is a vital property of cement and both BS and ASRM require the determination of
the specific surface ( in m2/ kg ). A direct approach is to measure the particle size
distribution by sedimentation or elutriation these methods are based on Stoke' s law ,giving
the terminal velocity of fall under gravity of a spherical particle in a fluid medium. A
development is the Wagner turbidimeter,as specified by ASTM C 115-96 a (
Reapproved 2003 ) .Here , the concentration of particles in suspension at a given
level in kerosene is determined using a beam of linght ,the percentage of light the
percentage of linght transmitted ( and hence the area of particles ) being
measured by a photocell .A typical curve of particle size distribution is shown in Fig
2.3. which also gives the corresponding contribution of these paricles to the total
surface area of the sample.
The specific surface of cement can be determined by the air permeability ( Lea and
Nurse ) method ( BS EN 196-6 : 1992 ) which measures the pressure drop when
dry air flows at a onstant velocity through a bed of cement of known porosity and
thickness. From this the surface area per unit mass of the bed can be related to the
permeability of the bed .
A modification of this method is that of Blaime ( ASTM C 204-05), in which the air
does not pass through the bed at a constant rate, but a known volume of air
passes at a prescribed average pressure,the rate of flow diminishing steadily, the
time taken for the flow to take place is measured,and for a given apparatus and
standard porosity ,the specific surface can be calculated.
Both of the above air permeability methods give similar values of specific surface
but very much higher than the Wargner turbidimeter method ( see Tsble 2.5 ). This
is due Wagner's assumption about the size distribution which effectively
underestimates the surface area of particles below 7.5 um . However, in practice,
al methods are adequate for assessing the relative variation in fineness of cement.

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Fig.2.3 Example of particle size distribution and cumulative surface area contributed by particles
up to any size for