Early age shrinkage strains at various depths of mortar prism specimens

Abstract

Over the last several decades, early age shrinkage is of concern since there is a potential for such shrinkage to lead to undesirable cracking. This paper presents an experimental study utilizing image analysis technique to monitor the early age shrinkage strains at various depths from the exposed surface of cementitious prism specimens cast with low w/c ratio. Furthermore, the effect of "time zero" value to initiate early age shrinkage measurement is also explored. The results show that early age shrinkage strains vary significantly with the depth from exposed surface. It also noted that the selection of the "time zero" values significantly affects the early age shrinkage strains when plotted against depth for the first 24 hours. © 2009 Taylor & Francis Group.