10. Cement characteristics and uses

Today's cement industry offers users a wide range of cements with precise characteristics tailored to specific applications. The wide range of compositions, strengths, setting and hardening speeds is designed to meet the very diverse uses of concrete on building sites or in factories, for the construction of buildings or civil engineering structures.

Climatic requirements, resistance to aggressive agents - these are all parameters that call for the selection of the most appropriate cement. To make this choice, it is important to know the specific characteristics of the different types of cement specified in the standards.

Over the past few years, concrete formulations have undergone a thorough overhaul, mainly due to the performance of cements, but above all to the use of specific additives such as plasticizers and superplasticizers, as...