Tensile, compressive and flexural basic creep of concrete at different stress levels

Concrete is brittle and highly sensitive to cracking, which is detrimental to the sustainability of its applications. Although it is well known that cracks occur mainly in tension, research on the mechanical behavior of concrete is usually limited to compression and investigations of creep behavior, a major concern for concrete structures, are no exception in this respect. This paper is intended to help remedy the situation. First, the new experimental set-ups developed to achieve tensile and bending creep are presented. The precautions taken to obtain relevant experimentation are also described. Results for specimens subjected to sustained stresses of 30, 40 and 50% of the tensile or compressive strength are then presented. The final discussion compares basic creep under the different types of loading for the three stress levels.