| Particle-Size Distribution | (Concrete Engineering) Particle distribution of granular materials among various sizes; for concrete material normally designated as gradation. Usually expressed in terms of cumulative percentages smaller or larger than each of a series of sieve openings or percentages between certain ranges of sieve openings. |
| Peeling | (Concrete Engineering) A process in which thin flakes of matrix or mortar are broken away from concrete surface; caused by adherence of surface mortar-to forms as forms are removed, or to trowel or float in portland cement plaster. |
| Plane of Weakness | (Concrete Engineering) The plane along which a structure under stress will tend to fracture; may exist because of the nature of the structure and its loading, by accident, or by design. |
| Plastic | (Concrete Engineering) A condition of freshly mixed concrete. mortar or cement -paste indicating that it is workable and readily re-moldable, is cohesive, and has an ample content of fines and cement but is not over wet. |
| Plastic Consistency | (Concrete Engineering) Condition in which concrete, mortar, or cement paste will sustain deformation continuously in any direction without rupture. |
| Plasticity | (Concrete Engineering) Property of freshly mixed concrete, cement paste or mortar which determines its ease of molding or resistance to deformation. |
| Pozzolan (ASTM C 618) | (Concrete Engineering) A siliceous, or siliceous and aluminous material, which in itself possesses little or no cementitious value but will, in a finely divided form, such as a powder or liquid and in the presence of moisture, chemically react with calcium hydroxide at ordinary temperatures to form permanent, insoluble compounds possessing cementitious properties. |
| Pretensioning | (Concrete Engineering) A method of prestressing reinforced concrete in which the steel is stressed before the concrete has hardened and restrained from gaining its unstressed position by bond to the concrete. |
| Pumping (of Pavements) | (Concrete Engineering) The ejection of a mixture of water and solid materials such as clay or silt along cracks, transverse or longitudinal joints, and along pavement edges caused by downward slab movement due to the passage of heavy loads, machinery or equipment over the pavement after free water has accumulated in or on the subbase, subgrade or basecourse. |
| Rebound | (Concrete Engineering) Wet shotcrete or sand and cement which bounces away from a surface again at which pneumatically applied mortar is being projected. |