Early age deformations of concrete with high content of mineral additions

Under the project “EcoBéton” (Green concrete) funded by the French National Agency (ANR), concrete mixtures with a high quantity of mineral additions, such as blast-furnace slag and fly ash were studied. A first approach to quantify their cracking risk was to measure their plastic shrinkage evolution. In parallel, the evolution of other parameters such as setting, capillary depression and porosity were also monitored to relate this deformation to the evolution of the microstructure of the studied mixtures. Setting monitoring by means of ultrasonic measurements allows obtaining significant macroscopic information such as hardening process and rigidity evolution. The correlation between these different parameters shows that the plastic shrinkage evolution can be divided into three phases driven by different mechanisms. Moreover, it appears that the use of mineral additions has an effect on the plastic shrinkage behaviour, but this impact is not proportional to the percentage of additions. It depends on the hydration process and the microstructure of the cementitious materials. So, it seems that an optimum content of cement replacement by mineral additions must be sought to limit the development of plastic shrinkage of concretes with mineral additions at early age. However, a high rate of substitution of cement may affect the early age compressive strength of the concrete. So these mixtures were also optimised to obtain a significant compressive strength at an early age, but this optimisation leads to a higher risk of cracking for some of them.