Cementitious composites are commonly evaluated considering their workability, level of incorporated air, elasticity modulus and compression strength. Data from compression testing commonly present a high dispersion, which has been attributed to effects of the specimen geometry, dimensions and of the degree of material compaction, as well as to problems in the specimen end-faces, such as their parallelism, orthogonality in relation to the compression axis and surface regularity. Specimen end-face regularization has been achieved through various techniques, such as adhering or non-adhering capping with various materials, mechanical grinding and systems involving special moulds. The regularization methods utilized more frequently employ sulfur mortar capping, neoprene cushions and surface grinding. The present work covers the experimental compression tests of cementitious composites of different classes of strength employing sulfur mortar capping and neoprene cushions. It was concluded that there is a strong influence of the chosen regularization technique on the measured compression strengths.
Cementitious composites; capping; testing for compression strength
