Assessment of Compressive Strength of Major Brands of Cement in Enugu Urban Markets

Abstract

Cement as a binder is the world’s most utilized construction material. There are so many brands of cement in production today that many are confused on which brand to use during construction work. Contractors generally choose any brand of cement for use based on their own personal and previous experiences from past works but since construction works are different, it is necessary to make a clear finding on which brands should be preferably used for given projects. This cannot be done successfully without carrying out as many laboratory tests as possible to establish a scientific position for each brand based on research. The aggregates and other ingredients of the concrete were initially characterized to determine the properties. Despite minimal variation in the compressive strength values of concretes produced with different brands of Portland cement, the average compressive strength of the concrete cubes indicated that BUA cement exhibited the highest values across all curing ages, closely succeeded by Dangote cement, while Unicem cement recorded the lowest values. The exponential function-based model developed adequately predicted the experimental observed compressive strength with high accuracy