Fresh Concrete practical reports

CE25 and CEM25 students,

Your Fresh Concrete practical reports are ready for collection outside my office. If you have any specific queries, please see me directly.

Common mistakes:

· Batching errors for Group B (and possibly Group C): if you have spotted that the actual quantities of ingredients were wrong, you should have pointed this out as these would have affected workability (and other properties) of the concrete.

· For the compacting factor, the masses of partially-compacted concrete and fully-compacted concrete must exclude the mass of the empty cylinder.

· Copying procedures straight from the handout. Thus, many left out how slump was measured using a ruler and tamping rod.

· Similarly, which specimens were hand-compacted and which were vibrated or uncompacted were not clearly stated in most reports.

· Some of you did not include the apparatus & procedures for batching, mixing, casting, compacting and curing, focusing only on the workability tests (slump and compacting factor).

· Many left out answering question no. 4. If the workability was higher, then the slump and compacting factor values would have been larger, and the concrete for your specimens would have been easier to scoop, pour, cast, compact and finish. And vice-versa for lower workability concrete.

· No references were given by many of you, although it is clear that some material (e.g. table of different workabilities) were copied from other sources. This constitutes plagiarism, and should have received a fail grade (if not worse). Be careful with this for future reports.

· There is no need to mention irrelevant material like Vebe tests, asphaltic concrete, what hydraulic cement is, etc. Your report should focus on what was done in the practical itself i.e. batching, mixing, workability tests, casting, compaction, curing.

· I have noticed some groups copying from previous years’ reports – and thus making a lot of mistakes.

· “Equipment” is always singular, never plural (“equipments”).

· “Coarse” aggregates, not “course” aggregates. Don’t rely on spell-check too much.

· It appears very few of you, if any, referred to the relevant British Standards listed in your handout. This would have helped significantly.

Despite the long list above, most of the work done appeared genuinely promising, and only need to address some of the above issues to improve for future reports.

Mr Yap