The hydration characteristics of pre-cast concrete considering the effects of effective initial steam-curing and water-curing duration were measured and analyzed with XRD, TG, X-ray CT, SEM-BSE and MIP techniques. The results show that the effective initial steam-curing duration for pre-cast concrete with lower water-binder ratio was 10 14 h at 50 °C and the initial water-curing duration was 7 14 d. And the hydration evolution of cement, fly ash and slag in pre-cast concrete was obtained respectively by combining the hydrochlorides and EDTA selecting dissolution methods, based on which the contents of hydrated and anhydrate in concrete were calculated and the corresponding dynamic capillary porosity was also determined. Moreover, the comparison between calculated results and experimental ones indicates that the proposed evolution models of microscopic characteristics corresponding to hydration kinetics of cemented materials could be adopted to predict the developing trend of capillary porosity and hydration-products content in pre-cast concrete with fly ash and slag under certain curing conditions.
The effects of specimen size and shape on development of water loss and shrinkage of mortar and concrete respectively were investigated. The experimental results showed that the effects of specimen size and shape on water loss ratio were consistent with those on drying shrinkage strain. It is also indicated that drying shrinkage strain has obvious linear correlation with water loss ratios independent of specimen size and shape. The effects of specimen size and shape on the water loss ratio were embodied in established model of averaged relative humidity improved by considering effects of sequential hydration and calculated by finite difference method. Furthermore, the effects of specimen size and shape on drying shrinkage strain of concrete were experimentally deduced and applied to modify criterion EB-FIP1990. The comparison between experimental and calculated results shows that the modified EB-FIP1990 can be adopted to predict drying shrinkage strain of concrete with reasonable accuracy.
