NEW RESULTS ON EARLY-AGE CRACKING RISK OF SPECIAL CONCRETE

The Center of Building Materials (cbm) at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen has many years of experience in the early-age cracking risk of concrete. This article reports new results on the early-age cracking risk of special concretes, with regard to their specific conditions or composition that is different to that of ordinary mass concrete. These special concretes are self-compacting concrete, pavement concrete, high-strength concrete and ultrahigh-performance concrete (with a compressive strength of up to 200 MPa at an age of 28 days). The authors report a test-based calculation method using the finite element method (FEM) that was developed to predict the thermal restraint stress in concrete structures under various weather and curing conditions. The authors conclude that the restraint stress distribution at any location in the concrete can be calculated realistically by applying appropriate rheological models.