Tensile Creep of Concrete at Early Age

An experimental study was conducted on unsealed concrete I-beam specimens to investigate early-age tensile creep. The tests were conducted on concrete specimens that were moist-cured for 24 hours. The specimens were loaded at 30% of their tensile failure load and tensile creep was monitored for 72 hours. Companion shrinkage specimens were used to measure drying shrinkage while the tensile creep test was performed. The investigation shows that the magnitude of early-age shrinkage exceeds the tensile creep values. The results showed that combined creep and shrinkage strains were increasing when the applied load was increased.