A concrete mix configurator to find that elusive batching code for your mix designs.

Microsoft Access 2000+

Concrete technology is more of an art form than a strict science. Concrete Technologists and Mix design gurus will all their own methods of proportional mix designing all nicely squeezed onto their computers in excel as laborious, lengthy and very complicated excel spreadsheets. I am such a technologist, but I have graduated from excel over to MS Access database some years ago to enable me to design simpler concrete mix designing tools to make it easier for general users to understand and use.

What is a Concrete Mix Configurator?

The SolMixCon Concrete Mix Configurator is a relatively simple tool that creates a batching code for a ready mixed concrete plant to manufacture concrete mixes based upon its components such as aggregate size, cement type, consistency, fines content and admixtures.

There are hundreds of concrete mix designs and trying to find the right one for your concrete mix can be difficult without the right tools.

Batch Coding Calculations

The data required to operate this database can be constructed or extrapolated from your existing mix design data. It uses simple relationships to select the correct Batch Book mix design and then constructs a cement content using the adjustment parameters set inside the database.

Lastly, it finds the base design cement content, makes adjustments to it for aggregate size, slump mm, fines content and admixtures, then compares this with any specified minimum cement content and the specified maximum water cement ratio calculated cement content.

Adjusted design cement content

v

specified minimum cement content

v

water/cement ratio cement content.

Where a water/cement ratio is specified and the consistency class (Slump mm) is changed it will re-calculate the cement content based on the adjusted water content of the mix. The re-calculated max water/cement ratio cement content is then used in the comparison for batch coding.

Batch Book Coding principle

A batch book is simply a list of concrete mix designs ranging between approx 80kg/m³ and 500kg/m³ in 5kg increments (84 mix designs per batch book). The concrete mix characteristics determine the type of mix design it is. A standard batch book may typically be used for making ready mixed concrete suitable for floor slabs or building footings. Other mix designs may be required for pumping concretes, which need more sand to make it go though the pipes of a concrete pump and make the mix more cohesive at higher workability values. Typically, each mix design is referenced by the Batch Book name followed by a cement content from the mix design (It may look something like 2PCW330).

Mix Design

For example, a concrete Mix Design is a combination of raw materials that make one cubic metre of fresh ready mixed concrete. This is usually cement, sand, coarse aggregate and water. The actual Mix Design is simply a list of material weights that make up one cubic metre of fresh concrete.

To ensure that one cubic metre of ready mixed concrete is produced for a range of cement contents all the other materials weights in the mix have to be adjusted to maintain the volumetric ‘yield’ of the concrete to 1.0 m³; this is why we have different weights for every cement content in 5kg increments throughout a range of cement content.

In a nutshell, every concrete mix design has different properties and every concrete mix design will have an associated batch book which converts the design into 84 different mixes governed by its cement content.

A concrete plant may have more than 10 Batch Books possibly making up some 840 different mix designs. Having a computer is an absolute must for generating electronic batch book figures and codes. In the old days we used to have to print batch books on paper and was limited to batching adjustments such aggregate moisture content etc. Using an electronic batch book will remove any previous restriction in mix design calculations.

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