The general standards and guidelines recommendations for PCC suggest alternating conditions of curing: starting with wet conditions for effective hydration of Portland cement followed by air-dry conditions for polymer hardening. The often accepted curing regime of PCC covers 5 days of wet curing and then the air-dry curing but it is not the optimum one. The aim of the investigation was to find the best scenario for PCC with two types of polymer modifiers: two-component epoxy resin and water dispersion of polyacrylates. The following exploitation properties were accepted as the criteria of evaluation of PCC curing effectiveness: compressive strength, tensile splitting strength, surface tensile strength (by pull-off method), wear resistance, water penetration under pressure and resistance to carbonation. The optimum time of PCC wet curing is possibly between 7 and 14 days, however, it have to be verified experimentally for specific PCC composition.

Elaborating composites containing waste materials requires study of basic mechanical properties and assessment of their structure quality. The subject of investigation was PPC concrete where aggregate was substituted with PET remaining after beverages bottles grinding. Substitution was done up to 25% (by volume). Waste material was fractioned and applied in various granulations. The main goal was to indicate the influence of such modification on the composite mechanical properties and to examine composite structure quality at macro level. Since PET and quartz differ greatly in density, to perform such examination it was possible to apply the nondestructive ultrasonic method, one of the most common NDT techniques used in material science and industry. The paper presents the effects of substitution of quartz with PET on ultrasonic wave propagation in PCC. The ultrasonic test results (measurements of wave velocity) compared with results of destructive tests (flexural and compressive strength) showed great correlation.