Shrinkage of high-strength concrete and high-flowability concrete

Abstract

Throughout the years, a large amount of research on the shrinkage of normal concrete with cube compressive strength up to 60 MPa has been carried out. Relatively, the amount of research on the shrinkage of high-strength concrete and high-fiowability concrete is not as much. However, some engineers have raised the concern that as these high-performance concretes tend to contain more cementitious materials or have a larger paste volume, their shrinkage might be larger than that of normal concrete. To address this issue and find out whether the shrinkage of high-performance concretes could be a major problem, a comprehensive testing programme using optical fibre strain gauges to measure the shrinkage strains was launched. The shrinkage measurement lasted over three years and covered normal concrete, high-strength concrete and high-fiowability concrete with characteristic cube strength ranging from 35 to 80 MPa, paste volume ranging from 30 - 40%, and slump flow up to 750 mm.