Cement vs Concrete Different Test, Type & Uses

Cement and concrete both are building material used for making good construction everywhere in the world. Concrete is widely used in domestic, commercial, recreational, rural and educational construction

Before cement we basically depends upon Lime, which consume lots of energy for preparation for use.

Now cement is very much cost effective and available everywhere so mostly we use cement concrete and cement mortar for building construction purpose.

Table of Contents

Basic comparison between Cement vs Concrete

Cement is a building material used for binding purpose, it is very fine in nature. While concrete is a mixture of many material like cement, sand, aggregate and water.

Cement is used with other material while concrete is already mixed.

Concrete is used for making RCC, DPC, PCC and filling many other holes of building, while cement is very thin paste so only used for concrete making or for making of cement plaster.

Cement plaster is a material which is done on the wall of any building to make the surface even and smooth.

Cement can not be used in bulk for filling of heavy duct. it is always advisable to use concrete which is made by adding cement.

The quality of concrete is depend upon the water cement ratio, which means if you put lots of water in your concrete then this will tends to decrease the quality of concrete. So we use controlled water cement ratio for any concrete mix.

Concrete is classified as per their compressive strength of 28 days cube testing in laboratory. while cement is tested compression, fineness, soundness. we will discuss all these in detail below.

Cement is manufactured in factory and packed in bag for the later use purpose, while concrete is prepared as per requirement. Because after adding water in cement it will be used within 30 minutes otherwise its hydration property decreases and it archive lesser strength thank desired.

cement is always packed and placed at dry place because it can absorb surrounding or atmospheric moisture and harden, which will not usable at all, it is advisable that we should use cement within 3 month of manufacturing date.

All these cement vs concrete is basic and very necessary differences.

CEMENT BUILDING MATERIAL

As we know cement is a building material having property of algeleceous and calcareous which means its particle well bind internally and having capacity to bind other same property material.

Cement is manufactured using lime silica and many other ingredient at the temperature of 1500 degree Celsius in mill.

Cement making process:

Cement is manufactured in mills where all the ingredients are crushed and clinkers are burned at high temperature of 1500 C. then gypsum is added to control the initial setting time of cement.

After all the process, cement is filled in bag of 50 kg and distributed. Here Cement vs Concrete is different because cement is grind into clinkers and made while concrete is mixing process only.

Types of cement:

OPC vs PPC Cement

There are lots of cement in which mostly Ordinary Portland cement is used. OPC is subdevided into different grade form based on their strength. In which standard is 33 grade while OPC 43 Grade is mostly used.

OPC 33 grade

OPC 43 Grade

OPC 53 Grade

Nowadays we also use PPC (Portland Pozzolana Cement) for wall plastering and slab casting. overall ppc is good for residential building construction.

Other cements are also available like

White Cement and Coloured Cement
Quick Setting Cement
Rapid Hardening Cement
Low Heat Cement
Expanding Cement
High Alumina Cement
Blast Furnace Cement
Acid Resistant Cement
Sulphate Resistant Cement
Fly Ash Blended Cement

All these cement are used for their specific purpose and manufactured as their name indicating.

Concrete Making Process:

Concrete is made in weight mixing or volume mixing plant. weight batch mixing of concrete is very advisable because it gives proper ratio of concrete aggregate so that we can easily achieve our goal of high strength.

First we have to decide which standard concrete ratio we have to make, like M20, M25, M30 or M40 many more

Note: we can use nominal mix upto M25 (1:1:2) after that we have to design our mix for standard data.

CONCRETE MIX RATIO for different grade of concrete (Nominal standard Mix ratio)

M5 = 1:5:10

M7.5 = 1:4:8

M10 = 1:3:6

M15 = 1:2:4

M20 = 1:1.5:3

M25 = 1:1:2

you can check CONCRETE MIX DESIGN HERE

Second we have to add all the ingredients and mix them thoroughly upto 2 minutes.
Then we take concrete to original placing place, for this purpose we use pump, manual labour, and machines.
For the proper compaction of concrete we should ensure that the shuttering quality and fixation.
Use proper vibrator to compact concrete very strongly.
use proper water cement ratio so that segregation of concrete is not happen
from all these info we can say cement vs concrete is different building material.

Proper curing is done on harden concrete because it is in the cement hydration process.

You are reading cement vs concrete difference, hope you are enjoying !!!

TEST OF CONCRETE

After the placement of concrete we can check strength of concrete by these methods

Cube compression test of concrete

for this test cube of 150mm is filled using freshly mixed concrete and placed in water after 24 hour of compaction in cube and test after 3 days, 7 days, 14 days and 28 days.
Cube compression test for 7 days and 28 days. Note concrete gain its 99.90% strenth in 28 days while it achieve 2/3rd part within 7 days. so initial curing is necessary.
This test is very necessary for every RCC work.
We take sample of 6 cube for 7 days and 28 days testing.
While IS 456 says we should take sample of conrete vs cement
1. 1 sample for 1 to 5 cubic metre of work
2. 2 sample for 6 to 15 cubic metre of work
3. 3 sample for 16 to 30 cubic metre of work
4. 4 sample for 31 to 50 cubic metre of work
5. for more than 50 cubic metre, we should take 4 sample and additional 1 sample for every 50 m3.

Other NDT TEST test are

like Pulse velocity test for non destructive purpose.
we can also use rebound hammer test for ndt testing purpose of concrete

TEST OF CEMENT

CEMENT is tested for its compressive, soundness and fineness.

Fineness test of cement:

In this test cement is passed from 90 micron sieve and it should achieve more than 90% passing ratio.

Setting time of Concrete

Setting time of concrete is tested using Vicat apparatus.

Initial setting time = 30 minutes
final setting time = 10 hour

Compressive Test of cement:

In this method cement mortar (1:3) cube are prepared of 75mm size and test after 7 days and 28 days for compression load. This is somehow cement vs concrete similarity

Soundness Test of Cement:

In this method Le-chateliers apparatus is used for test conducting.

Sample of cement is tested for excess lime in cement because it affect the overall weathering affect on outer surface of building. which is overall volume change effect.

Le-chatelier apparatus of 30mm dia and 30mm height is filled with cement paste of 0.78 of standard consistency of cement. and placed for 24 hour and test without boiling and after boiling. So it should not difference more than 10mm.

Here we explained cement vs concrete hope you like. Many of question directly opted from these standard values of cement and concrete.