What is Plain Cement Concrete? Its Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages and Disadvantages of Plain Cement Concrete

Hello learners, in this article we will discuss PCC which means plain cement concrete in detail so let’s start learning all about plain cement concrete.

Nowadays concrete is a very important building material that helps to build a very small structure to high-rise buildings like Burj Khalifa or Atal Setu in India. 

Generally, concrete is placed in two-way Plain cement concrete and reinforced cement concrete. In this article, we discuss plain cement concrete, not reinforced cement concrete. If you want to learn about reinforced cement concrete you must read our other article based on and for cement concrete.

Plain concrete can be defined as a mass that is made from any cementing material and it consists of sand, gravel, and water. 

Mixing of such naturally occurring materials along with a cementing material results in a partial solid mass that can be molded in any shape and any form, when it is in wet condition and it becomes hard on drying. Concrete has been used as a building material probably for the last around 200 years. 

Concrete is a highly successful building material and has gained white popularity for the following reasons. 

Concrete is highly durable even under hostile environment conditions. It can be easily cast into any safe and size. It is relatively cheaper and widely available 

The most important property of concrete is its compressive resisting ability which is compressive strength that supersets any other building materials. At present time we have concrete grades ranging from 5 MPa to 200 MPa.

The major drawback of concrete is that it cannot resist significant tension. The tensile strength of concrete is about 10% to 15% of its entire compressive strength. The use of Plain concrete as a building material is limited to places where tensile strength never develops. For example, pedestals, mass concreting in dams, etc.

Plain cement concrete has good compressive strength but very little tensile strength 10 limiting its use in the construction industry. Plain cement concrete is used where good compressive strength and weight are men’s requirements and tensile stress is very low.

Apart from that Plain Cement concretes are widely used in Road construction, making floor of building