Decoupling of Autogenous Shrinkage and Tensile Creep Strain in High Strength Concrete at Early Ages

Appropriately interpreting the measured creep strain is critical for obtaining the actual creep strain, especially for high-strength concretes characterized by a low water/cement ratio (w/c) because autogenous shrinkage is significant in such concrete at early ages. To investigate the interaction between the autogenous shrinkage and tensile creep of concrete at early ages, various tests were conducted on concretes with water/cement (w/c) ratios =0.3 and 0.4, including basic tensile creep, strength, autogenous shrinkage, and the internal relative humidity (RH) measurements. The load was applied at the ages of 1 and 7 days at the stress/strength levels of 40% and 70%, respectively. It was found that the measured early-age tensile creep strain becomes negative due to the large autogenous shrinkage involved. The principle of superposition can be used for creep-autogenous shrinkage decoupling to obtain the actual basic tensile creep, as there is virtually no additional RH reduction or stress-induced shrinkage in concrete due to the sustained tensile load at early ages. An average tensile strength gain of 8.2% was found in specimens after sustained tensile loading compared to the unloaded specimens. An exponential function is proposed to quantify the autogenous shrinkage effect on the basic tensile creep in terms of specific creep/autogenous shrinkage ratio.