ABSTRACT
The difficulties for specifiers occur when they do not wish to have a high early strength cement. For example, they may wish to indirectly achieve a lower rate of heat evolution from the cement. Because an ‘R’ cement also qualifies as the normal cement, they cannot use the cement standard to achieve this objective. The alternative would be to put a direct requirement on the concrete, such as an adiabatic temperature rise, but to be fair to the concrete producer the cement type and class should not then be specified nor should the minimum cement content. The water/cement ratio will ensure enough cement for durability and the BS ENV206[8] water penetration test (or the prEN206 deemed to satisfy minimum fines content) will ensure enough fine material to fill the voids between the aggregates.
