Mix proportioning of self-compacting normal and high-strength concretes

Over the last two decades, self-compacting concrete mixes of varying strengths and performance have been proportioned on a trial-and-error basis using time-consuming laboratory tests, such as the slump cone, J-ring and L-box tests. An alternative method has recently been proposed for proportioning self-compacting high-performance concrete and self-compacting ultra-high performance concrete mixes with and without steel fibres (with characteristic cube strength between 140 and 160 MPa). This method is based on an extensive investigation of the flow characteristics of such mixes using computational simulations, thus avoiding time-consuming laboratory tests. However, the mixes proportioned using this method contained no coarse aggregate, which has a significant effect on the flow characteristics. This paper extends the method to the proportioning of self-compacting concrete mixes that contain traditional coarse aggregate and whose characteristic cube strengths vary between 35 and 100 MPa.