STRENGTH DEVELOPMENT OF CONCRETE USING SEVERAL NIGERIAN CEMENT BRANDS

Abstract

This work reported the strength development of concrete using several Nigeria cement brands. This has become imperative due to the recent development of uncertainty of the quality of cement produced in Nigeria. The cement brands used were Dangote, Elephant and BUA Portland cement respectively. They were used to produce concrete specimens of seventy-five (75) moulds with dimensions 100 mm x100 mm x 100 mm and fifty (50) beam moulds with dimensions 100 mm x 100 mm x500 mm with input from the surface response methodology. They were cured for 3 days, 14 days, and 28 days respectively. The result shows that BUA branded cement concrete was best in compressive strength by 26.8 % and 29.4 % over Dangote and Elephant branded cement concrete at 28 days of curing. However, Dangote branded cement concrete has the same flexural strength with Elephant branded cement concrete but was better in flexural strength than BUA branded cement concrete at 28 days of curing by 3.10 %. The quadratic model was able to predict the compressive and flexural strength of the branded cement concrete with a R2 of 0.9813 and 0.9613 respectively.