ABSTRACT
108Cement is the only standard material in concrete composition. The present results simply corroborated the fact that nano-additions on ordinary Portland cement (OPC) influences its hardened properties appreciably in both short term (1 day, 3 day) and medium term (28 days). As 90-95% cement hardens within 28 days from its casting, it is a standard protocol to test the cement properties at 28 days. The experimental work was on the hardened properties of basic cement mortar of a suitable w/c ratio of 0.4 (based on cement’s consistency) and sand (river):cement = 3:1 which were initially mixed and then modified with nano-silica (nS) (in proportions ranging 0, 0.5, 0.75, 1, 1.25, and 1.5% @ cement wt.), multi-walled Industrial Grade carbon nanotubes (CNT) (0, 0.02, 0.05, and 0.1% @ cement wt. dispersed in a suitable admixture-superplas- ticizer-1% poly-carboxylate ether (PCE) @ cement wt.) and nano-titanium oxide (n-TiO2) (0, 1, and 2.5% @ cement wt.) also dispersed in a suitable admixture-superplasticizer-1% PCE @ cement wt. as the latter two were found unsuitable in dissolving in water in its original powder form.
