COMPUTER-AIDED DESIGN OF NORMAL WEIGHT CONCRETE MIX TO ACI CODE

Reinforced concrete is unique in the two materials, reinforcing steel and concrete. In the design of concrete structures, the specified compressive strength of concrete (f') is the most important property and for which a concrete mix is designed. However, the selection of concrete proportions involves a balance between the requirements for strength, workability, durability, density, appearance and reasonable economy. The ACI standard recommended practice for selecting proportions for normal and heavyweight concrete provides a first approximation of proportions intended to be checked by trial batches in the laboratory or field and adjusted, deemed to produce the desired characteristics of the concrete. The code describes methods for selecting proportions for concrete which stipulate the use of a number of tables and involve the manual calculations. To get rid of the manual calculation and to make the methods more simplified, a computer programme has been prepared to design a concrete mix to ACI Code and is presented in this paper.