Adhesion strength and shrinkage of shotcrete

The growth of the adhesion strength on a sandblasted concrete wall and the growth of the compressive strength showed a correlation. However, the scatter in the results indicates that further investigations have to be done in order to establish a reliable relation between the growth in adhesion and compressive strength with age. The results from the field tests showed that the adhesion strength was significantly higher on rock surfaces that had been water jet-scaled (with 22 MPa water pressure) than those treated by mechanical scaling followed by cleaning of the rock surface (water pressure 0.7 MPa).