Influence of Water-cement Ratio and Water Reducing Admixtures on the Rebound Number of Hardened Concrete

In this paper, effect of water-cement ratio (w/c) and type of water reducing admixtures (WRA) on the Schmidt hammer rebound number (RN) were investigated. Concrete of mix ratio 1:2:4 was prepared at the w/c of 0.45, 0.50, 0.55 and 0.60 and with each of the three WRA at the w/c of 0.45. Concrete cubes of size 150 mm were cast and cured in water for 3, 7 and 28 days. RNs of the cubes were determined and the compressive strengths (fc) corresponding to the RNs obtained from the conversion graph supplied by the manufacturer were compared with the compressive strengths obtained from crushing machine (CM). The results showed that as the w/c increased, the RN increased up to when w/c was 0.5 and began to drop, while there was no significant effect of all the WRA on the RN. It was also found that fc obtained from CM and those obtained using the conversion graph differed considerably. A new correlation graph was therefore proposed, which showed a correlation coefficient of 0.96, while coefficient of determination obtained for the regression equation between RN and fc, was as high as 0.92. The study concluded that w/c had effect on RN and that the equation developed could be used to determine fc, once RN is known.