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Standard Consistency of Hydraulic Cement

The document describes an experiment to determine the standard consistency of cement paste. Standard consistency is defined as the consistency that allows a Vicat plunger to penetrate 5-7 mm from the bottom of a Vicat mould filled with cement paste. Various trials are conducted by varying the water content until a penetration of 7 mm is achieved, giving a standard consistency of 32%. The recommended standard consistency as per IS 4031 is 30%. The experimental value is higher than recommended, possibly due to manual errors.

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89 views2 pages

Standard Consistency of Hydraulic Cement

The document describes an experiment to determine the standard consistency of cement paste. Standard consistency is defined as the consistency that allows a Vicat plunger to penetrate 5-7 mm from the bottom of a Vicat mould filled with cement paste. Various trials are conducted by varying the water content until a penetration of 7 mm is achieved, giving a standard consistency of 32%. The recommended standard consistency as per IS 4031 is 30%. The experimental value is higher than recommended, possibly due to manual errors.

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faimy joseph
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Expt. No.

2 Date:09/09/2020

1. TESTS ON HYDRAULIC CEMENT


STANDARD CONSISTENCY OF CEMENT

Reference: IS 4031 (Part 4) – 1999


Aim: To determine the quantity of water required to produce a cement paste of standard
consistency.

Significance: Since the fineness of cement samples differ from batch to batch, cement pastes
with the same water content may differ in consistency. Hence the consistency of cement paste is
standardized by varying the water content until the paste has a given resistance to penetration,
when it is first mixed. Moreover, it is required for the determination of initial and final setting
times and also for the preparation of test specimens to determine the compressive strength of
cement.

Apparatus: Vicat apparatus, Vicat mould, 10mm diameter plunger, stop watch, weighing
balance, measuring jar and nonporous smooth plate.

Fig 1.1 Vicat Apparatus

Procedure: Standard consistency of cement paste is defined as that consistency which will
permit the Vicat plunger to penetrate to a point 5 to 7 mm from the bottom of the Vicat mould,
when tested as below:
Take 300g of cement in a pan and a known quantity (about 30% of weight of cement) of water in
a measuring jar. Add water to cement to prepare a paste and start stopwatch simultaneously. Fill
the cement paste in the Vicat mould, which is resting on a nonporous plate within the gauging
time. The gauging time is the time interval between the additions of water to dry cement until the
commencement of filling the mould. The gauging time shall not be less than 3 minutes and not
more than 5 minutes. A plunger of 10mm diameter is attached to the moving rod of Vicat
apparatus. After completely filling the mould, smoothen the surface of the paste making it level
with the top of the mould. The mould should be slightly shaken to expel the air. Place the test
block in the mould together with the nonporous resting plate under the rod bearing the plunger.
Lower the plunger gently to touch the surface of the paste in the test block, and quickly release it
allowing it to sink into the paste. Penetration of the plunger is noted. Prepare trial pastes with
varying percentages of water and repeat the test until the plunger penetrates 5mm to 7mm from
the bottom of the mould. Express the amount of water as percentage by mass of dry cement,
corrected to first decimal place.

Observations and Calculations

Weight of the dry cement (W1) = 300g

Penetration of Plunger Standard Consistency


Weight of water added,
Trial from the bottom of mould W2
W2 (g) ×100 (%)
(mm)
W1
90g 31mm 30%
1

93g 13mm 31%


2

96g 7mm 32%


3

Result: Standard Consistency of Cement = 32%

Recommended Value: Recommended value of standard consistency of cement is about 30 %

Inference: As per IS 4031(part 4) –1999,the recommended value of standard consistency of


cement is about 30%. The value obtained from experiment is 32% which is more than the
standard value .This may be due to manual errors while doing the experiment

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