ABSTRACT
The concreting for the first Italian RCC dam is close to commence in southern Sardinia island. During the last months, extensive laboratory research has been carried out to pave the way for when it is decided which RCC mixture proportions are the most appropriate to start with in the dam. The reasonably available materials covered three different mineral admixtures and all of them were included in the laboratory trial mix program. The scope of this paper is to compare the results obtained with the different admixtures and to stress the most significant findings derived from the mixtures study. A debate regarding the much more adequate use of the water/(cementitious + sand fines) ratio instead of the water/cementitious ratio when dealing with high fines content sands is emphasized at the end of the paper.
