Evaluating Water-Cementitious Material Ratio as Acceptance Parameter for Freshly Placed Concrete

Thanks to the importance of water-cementitious materials ratio (w/cm) to concrete mixture design and performance, measuring w/cm could potentially be a valuable alternative to using strength testing as an acceptance parameter for concrete. However, few agencies measure or verify w/cm in concrete in-place, despite the fact that water content can vary from the design target value due to factors such as variability in aggregate moisture contents and concrete batching processes, and it is not uncommon for w/cm values reported on batch tickets to differ from the actual w/cm of concrete delivered to a project site (Robertson, et al., 2022). Petrographers can estimate w/cm from hardened concrete cores or samples within a range of values (e.g., +/- 0.05), but there is no generally accepted standard procedure for determining w/cm of hardened concrete (ASTM 2020).

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Sponsor Organizations:

  University of Wisconsin, Platteville

  Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
  Platteville, WI  United States  53818
• Start Date: 20251003
• Expected Completion Date: 20280131
• Actual Completion Date: 0

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Acceptance tests; Admixtures; Mix design; Moisture content; Water cement ratio
• Subject Areas: Design; Highways; Materials;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01979812
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Wisconsin Department of Transportation
• Files: RIP, STATEDOT
• Created Date: Feb 18 2026 11:20AM