How batching of concrete is done

Concrete is a multipurpose, long-lasting, eco-friendly, and inexpensive material as well as globally recognized construction material. To produce superior quality concrete, the components of concrete should be calculated properly and perfectly. Once mix design is set, the initial task should be batching materials.

Batching of concrete stands for the method of estimating and mixing necessary concrete ingredients both with weight or volume according to the mix design and implanting them into a mixture to form a consistent quality of concrete.

By perfectly computing all the material applied in the concrete formation, it becomes possible to maintain consistency of proportions in all consequent batches.

Why Batching of Concrete is Important?

Usually, following three types of batching are undertaken for concrete components:

01. Random Volumetric Batching: Batching devoid of any control on the size and shapes of applied containers leads to big errors and deviations like utilizing “ghamellas” i.e. – by tallying numbers of ghamellas. This method is totally unscientific, unrefined and should not be recommended even for a small project.

02. Volume Batching of Concrete: Volume batching of concrete is accomplished with the use of measurement boxes, locally named “farmas or gauge boxes”. Concrete components like aggregates ( Kapachi +Sand) and cement is calculated with farmas or gauge boxes and proper precaution should be maintained to ensure that the farmas or gauge boxes are filled excessively. To calculate the quantity of water, the water meter should be utilized when batching or use cans of water contain fixed volume.

03. Weigh Batching of Concrete: Weigh batching of concrete is accomplished with the use of a weigh batch or the weighing system on the batching plant. On big projects, automatic batching plants are set up to facilitate optimizing quality and uniformity.

Water is very vital material and therefore, maximum water should be used for batching. If the quantity of water is less, the functionality of concrete will be hampered whereas surplus water will minimize the strength of concrete. Water should be computed perfectly in litres.

The selection of batching method is based on the size of job, production rate and standards of batching performance.

Usually batching is performed with volume. Precision in batching is very crucial. It is better to perform weigh batching instead of volume batching. Volume batching is mostly effective where weigh batching is not possible. It is always recommended to incur additional cost for it, because in long term, it saves huge costs.

Note: The quantity of cement should also be calculated by maintaining the precision of ± 2 percent and the quantity of aggregates, admixtures and water should be calculated with a precision of ± 3 percent.

Article Source: gharpedia.com

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Published By

Rajib Dey

www.constructioncost.co

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