Performance of High Early Strength Concrete (HESC) using Different Superplasticizer

High Early Strength Concrete (HESC) is one type of high-performance concrete. HESC production requires high-quality materials and additives, namely chemical admixture type C (superplasticizer) to get high performance. This study aims to obtain a HESC mix design using a superplasticizer with the best performance. The 3 variations of HESC are made by adding a superplasticizer to a mixed concrete with the same dosage but from 3 different manufacturers, namely HESC-1, HESC-2, and HESC-3. Specimens performance consisted of tests for both fresh concrete and hardened concrete. The fresh concrete was tested by the slump, and the hardened concrete was tested by density and compressive strength tested at the age of 12 hours, 14 hours, and 3 days on cylindrical specimens measuring 100 mm x 200 mm which have been cured by water curing. Based on the test results, it was found that the average slump values in HESC-1, HESC-2, and HESC-2 were (cm): 64.0, 69.5, and 70.5. This shows that all HESC specimens are categorized as Self Compacting Concrete. According to the results of the density test on all specimens ranging from 2382 to 2436 kg/m3, all specimens are included in normal-weight concrete. With the initial compressive strength value of HESC at the age of 14 hours in the range of 21.0 to 24.9 Mpa, it can be concluded that all HESC specimens meet the requirements of High Early Strength Concrete, where HESC-3 is the best performance one.