Monitoring of Structural Performance of Early-age Concrete Pavement

Abstract

Early-age concrete shrinkage induces stress, which affects the cost and service life of concrete pavements. Concrete construction quality assurance has been evaluated as an experiment test, but in this paper, a performance monitoring method for initial concrete quality management using sensors was proposed. To monitor the behavior of Portland cement concrete, strain measurements of field slabs were conducted, and a methodology was presented that independently derived autogenous, drying, and thermal shrinkage in the initial stages of concrete placement using strain sensors. Total strain was measured under five different environmental conditions and shrinkage strain was calculated for each condition. By measuring the strain of the slab and the specimen, the drying shrinkage strain range was measured to be approximately 54% higher than that measured by the conventional non-stressed cylinder method because it was possible to measure the drying shrinkage strain at the surface rather than in the middle part of the slab along its depth direction. Furthermore, calculation of the stress-dependent strain allowed the presentation of more intuitive and accurate results. As the monitoring of independent shrinkage occurrence is possible, the consequent calculated result of the stressdependent strain acting on real slabs will help improve the construction quality, reduce the development of defects in concrete structures, and increase the service life.