Experimental comparability between steam and normalcuring methods on tensile behavior of RPC

To address the limitation of the commonly used steam curing of reactive powder concrete (SC-RPC) in engineering, a preparation technology of normal curing reactive powder concrete (NC-RPC) is proposed. In this study, an experimental comparative research on the mechanical properties of NC-RPC and SC-RPC under uniaxial tension is conducted. Under the premise of giving full play to the ultra-high performance of RPC, the paper tries to explore whether normal curing can replace steam curing. The results show that various mechanical indexes of NC-RPC (e.g., tensile strength, ultimate tensile strain, elastic modulus and deformation performance) could basically reach the mechanical index values in steam curing at 28d age, some performance is even better at a longer age. So it affirms the feasibility of normal curing. In this paper, the influence of normal curing age on the tensile properties of RPC is discussed, and the relationship between each index and age is introduced in detail. Based on the experimental data, the tensile mechanism of RPC is analyzed theoretically, and two kinds of tensile constitutive models for RPC are proposed, one is curvilinear model, and another one is polygonal line model. The validity of the two models is further verified by the test results of others.