Tensile creep due to restraining stresses in high-strength concrete at early ages

This paper reports an experimental study on the early-age tensile creep behavior of high strength concrete (HSC) comprising of silica fume concrete, fly ash concrete and plain concrete under uniaxial restraining stresses. A series of restraint shrinkage tests were carried out adopting semi-adiabatic and isothermal conditions to determine the effects of temperature history on the tensile creep properties for young concretes. Furthermore, the effects of restraining stress history on creep were also discussed under three different degrees of restraint conditions. It was found that the initial thermal dilation deformation delayed the development of tensile creep and weakened the creep potential of early age concretes. It was also observed that the young concrete subjected to a lower restraining tensile stress history had a higher potential of visco-elastic response in tension at early ages.