Quality differences of wet mix and dry mixready mix concrete

The discussion about the quality of wet and dry mixing processes is going on in many countries of the world for years, mostly with a more emotional than a technical background. Therefore, a number of leading companies who are supplying concrete mixers to the industry realized the need for an independent research study. These companies (IME, IMER, OMG-SICOMA) are supplying concrete mixers of different type: Twin shaft mixers and planetary mixers. As a neutral research institute, the Italian Concrete Institute was asked to provide services and to effect tests in order to fulfil a comparative research on the characteristics of concretes, produced using a dry mix process and a wet mix process. The research is meant to identify possible quality differences between the concrete produced using a stationary concrete mixer (wet mix process) and concrete produced by direct loading of the components into a truck mixer (dry mix process). This article is a summary of the complete research study carried out by the Italian Concrete Institute [1].

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