The effect of mineral admixture on shrinkage and creep of concrete

A comparison test on shrinkage and creep between high performance concrete (HPC) and ordinary concrete shows that HPC has a more obvious shrinkage at early stage. Therefore curing and maintenance for HPC are necessary to prevent cracks in that stage. The shrinkage at later stage and overall shrinkage of HPC are less. That is to say HPC is very unlikely to crack at a later stage if it does not crack at an early stage, which is helpful to the concrete durability. The creep value of HPC is less than that of ordinary concrete, which means HPC structure changes little under continuous forces and the stability of HPC structure can thus be enhanced. Long-term shrinkage, creep value and upward values of a pre-stressed test HPC beam are all smaller than theoretically calculated values. The development trend of the long-term shrinkage and creep value is in accordance with the previous study on ordinary concrete beam, which proves that HPC structure has good stability.