SAM 4062 CONCRETE LABORATORY

C6- NORMAL CONSISTENCY CEMENT PASTE

INTRODUCTION
The manufacture of cement requires stringent control and a number of test are performed to
ensure the cement is of the desired quality. One of the tests of the properties is the setting time.
This test is done on a neat cement paste of a standard consistency. A standard consistency is the
water content of the paste that will produce the desired consistency of any given cement. The
water content of the standard paste is expressed as a percentage by mass of the dry cement, the
usual range of values being between 26 and 33 percent. A cement paste is said to have a standard
consistency when a plunger of the Vicat’s apparatus penetrates the paste to a point 6 ± 1mm
from the base of the mould.

OBJECTIVE
To determine the water content to produce standard consistency of cement paste.

APPARATUS
1) Balance
2) 200ml glass graduated measuring cylinder
3) Vicat Apparatus

1
SAM 4062 CONCRETE LABORATORY

PROCEDURE
1) About 500gm of dry cement is weighted.
2) 100g of water is added to the cement (20% by weight of cement)
3) The cement and water are mixed thoroughly to produce a ball-like shape by tossing from
one hand to another.
4) The spherical mass is placed in the cylindrical mould and shakes it forward and backward
until the paste has filled up the mould. The excess paste are sliced off at the top of the
mould by single oblique stroke of a sharp edged trowel and the top is smoothed, if
necessary with a few light touches of the pointed end trowel. During the operation of
cutting and smoothing, take care not to compress the paste.
5) The mould is placed on the base of the Vicat’s Apparatus, in such a way the plunger is
above the center of the mould.
6) The above sequence should be within 2 minutes from the moment the water was added.
Bring the plunger in contact with the surface of the cement paste and release it.
7) The reading of the scale of the Vicat’s Appratus is recorded 30 second after the plunger
being released.
8) The entire procedure repeated four to five times, each using new dry cement and
increasing amount of water.
9) The graph the percentage of water against the distance from the base is plotted.

2
SAM 4062 CONCRETE LABORATORY

DATA

Percentage
Distance
Number of Volume of of Penetration
from base
test water (ml) water/cement (mm)
(mm)
content (%)
1 135 27 2 38
2 145 29 8 32
3 155 31 10 30
4 165 33 17 23
5 175 35 22 18

RESULT
1. Water content for 5 mm penetration = 37.96 %
2. Water content for 7 mm penetration = 37.21 %
3. Water content for standard cement consistency = 29.0%

QUESTION
1.) Why the cement paste becomes warm when water was added?
When water was added to the cement paste, we may notice that cement paste becomes
warm which the temperature of mixing increases. It is because when cement is adding
water, the chemical process is called exothermic which heat is produce due to water
adding to cement paste. So that’s why we feel the cement paste become warm when
water is added to it.
3
SAM 4062 CONCRETE LABORATORY

CONCLUSION AND COMMENTS

During the experiment is carrying, we find that the volume of water will effect the
penetration of plunger into the cement paste. The more water we added to cement paste the more
penetration of plunger into the cement paste. So we may conclude that volume of water is
proportional with penetration. But unfortunately when we come to the fifth value where the
volume of water increase to 170ml, the penetration reading we get is only 1mm. We wait for a
while but it still don’t have any changes. After we discuss with the technician, we decided to
ignore the last reading where I personally don’t include it into the percentage of water versus
distance from base graph because it will effect a lot to my straight line.

REFERENCE:
Herubin, Charles A.: BASIC CONSTRUCTION MATERIALS (Third Edition). New Jersey:
Prentice Hall Inc., 1987.

R.C. Smith, C.K. Andres: MATERIALS OF CONSTRUCTION (Fourth Edition). New York:
McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1988.

Spencer, Albert: MATERIALS FOR CONSTRUCTION. Virginia: Reston Publishing Company

Inc., 1982.

D.F. Orchard: CONCRETE TECHNOLOGY (Third Edition). London: Applied Science

Publishers Ltd., 1973.