Construction and Build Environment 89 The Effect of Cement and Water Cement Ratio on Concrete Paving Block

This paper presents experimental results regarding the effects of cement content and water cement ratio (w/c) in the production of concrete paving block. Laboratory trials were conducted to compare and investigate the effect of 12 % and 15 % cement content in concrete mixtures at five different w/c ratios. In total, 60 concrete mixtures were cast and tested to determine dry density, compressive strength and skid resistance of concrete paving block samples. The design strength level ranging from 20 to 33 MPa and 31 to 42 MPa was achieved using w/c ratio from 0.50 to 0.70 for 12 % cement content and 0.45 to 0.65 for 15 % cement content, respectively. This study shows that, it was feasible to produce paving blocks prepared with 12 % cement that satisfied the minimum compressive strength (30MPa) in accordance to MA20 for trafficked area less than 3 tonnes gross weight