Sika develops and markets a complete range of admixtures and additives for use in concrete, cement and mortar production. These products enhance specific properties of the fresh and hardened concrete, such as workability, watertightness, durability, or early and final strength.
"Our Concrete Systems team drives innovation through focused research and development, creating solutions that meet customer needs while focusing on performance, usability, and sustainability. We aim to extend the life of structures, reduce maintenance, and boost energy and material efficiency. Sika’s advanced admixtures deliver high performance with a lower carbon footprint." Emmanuel Gallucci, Head of Technology - Concrete Systems
Combining Sustainability and Performance
Extended workability, controlled over several hours, is especially important for urban construction sites with congested traffic, or remote areas resulting in long transportation times. At the same time, once the concrete is placed, fast curing is of utmost importance to meet tight construction schedules. Sika ViscoFlow® is a workability enhancing admixture, based on a new inhouse-developed polymer which significantly prolongs the workability time of the fresh concrete and still ensures equally fast strength development. The workability time can be modified in accordance to job site requirements.
Since more than a hundred years, Sika paves the way for progress in concrete solutions by developing and marketing admixtures and additives for use in concrete, cement and mortar production. Sika has the technologies to make this building material considerably more environmentally friendly.
| Typical Application | Sika Solution | Special Performance |
|---|---|---|
| Water Reducing Admixtures | Sika® ViscoCrete® | Highly efficient superplasticizer based on polycarboxylates |
| Workability Enhancing Admixtures | Sika ViscoFlow® | Newly developed PCE, enhancing the workability time significantly, allowing for the time needed to transport and to place the concrete properly |
| Shrinkage Controlling Admixtures | Sika®Control | Strong reductions in concrete shrinkage. Up to 40% is possible. |
| Cohesiveness enhancing Admixtures | Sika® Stabilizer | Increases overall mix cohesiveness without promoting concrete stiffening, which ultimately results in easier placement, reduced consolidation effort and improved aesthetics |
Securing quality for concrete
Concrete is the most widely used building material in the world. From tunnels and dams to parking structures and skyscrapers, it forms the backbone of modern infrastructure. Any advancement in concrete engineering benefits everyone, whether through reduced cost, enhanced strength, improved durability, or easier application. As the material evolves, our infrastructure becomes safer and more resilient. However, concrete is a composite material, and its performance depends on its weakest component. Sika’s admixture technologies address this challenge by recognizing that raw material quality and properties vary significantly across regions and often decline over time. By bridging these gaps, Sika technologies ensure concrete achieves superior performance and reliability worldwide.
Durability of concrete structures
As the cost of structures increases so does the need to keep these structures in service for as long as possible. This effectively reduces the life-cycle costs and aids in the investment decision from a time-value of money perspective. Limiting and preventing cracks protects the high alkaline environment that the concrete inherently creates. This, in turn, protects the reinforcement from corrosion. This is one of the most important attributes of concrete durability and one of the hardest to achieve consistently, but that is all about to change. A new shrinkage reducing/compensating admixture like Sika®Control SRA has the potential to generate a shrinkage neutral concrete, in other words, non-shrink concrete. High-performance concrete thus is not a single type of concrete, but rather, any number of concrete engineered to possess certain properties suitable for a particular construction application.
