Abstract:
As water is becoming a scarce material day-by-day, there is an urgent need to do research work
pertaining to saving of water in making concrete and in constructions. Curing of concrete is
maintaining satisfactory moisture content in concrete during its early stages in order to develop
the desired properties. However, good curing is not always practical in many cases. Curing of
concrete plays a major role in developing the concrete microstructure and pore structure and
hence improves its durability and performance. Keeping importance to this, an attempt has been
made to develop internal-curing concrete by using Sapindus mukurossi. In this experimental
investigation, the strength characteristics of normal cement mortar cast with the self-curing agent
Sapindus mukurossi have been studied and compared with the corresponding conventionally
cured concrete. Is method of mix design was adopted, for the normal strength internal curing of
cement mortar of 1:3. Cement mortar is design on trial and error basis. For producing internalcuring
concrete trial dosage of 2%, 2.5%, 3%, 3.5%, 4% and 5% of Sapindus mukurossi by
weight of water was used and tested. It was observed that after implementation of this technique
the water consumption for curing was reduced upto some extent.
