New Performance-Based Approach to Ensure Quality Curing during Construction
Publication: Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 22, Issue 7
Abstract
Ensuring sufficient water availability in hydrating concrete is a key to achieving quality curing that protects the fresh concrete in the short term and develops the potential properties of the mixture for long-term performance of concrete pavement. Excessive early-age evaporation from the concrete pavement surface can potentially result in plastic shrinkage cracking, high porosity, and low strength at the concrete surface leading to a variety of surface distresses. Application of liquid curing compounds on newly placed concrete pavement surfaces has been widely used to minimize evaporation. However, the availability of a test method to assess the efficacy of a curing compound relative to the actual environmental conditions encountered in the field is still lacking. Therefore, advancements are needed to further facilitate the evaluation of curing effectiveness (CE). This paper presents a laboratory-based procedure, which bridges laboratory measured parameters to performance in the field, as part of a process to qualifying the effectiveness of a curing compound membrane. The curing monitor system, a device capable of accurately recording relative humidity and temperature at three critical locations along with wind speed and solar radiation, is used as part of a test procedure to assess the efficacy of a curing compound. A compound curing evaluation index (EI) is defined in terms of the effective curing thickness concept and moisture loss at 24 h after placement. The EI is useful to rank the curing compound relative to laboratory test conditions. From the limited field application studies, it has been observed that the proposed test procedure has good potential to be an effective tool to assess CE and quality under field conditions.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
References
AASHTO. (1997). “Specification for water retention by concrete curing materials.” AASHTO T 155, American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, Washington, D.C.
ACI Committee 305. (2000). “Hot weather concreting.” ACI 305R-00, American Concrete Institute, Farmington Hills, Mich.
ACI Committee 308. (2001). “Guide to curing concrete.” ACI 308R-01, American Concrete Institute, Farmington Hills, Mich.
ASTM. (2003). “Standard test method for water retention by concrete curing materials.” C156, American Society for Testing and Material, West Conshohocken, Pa.
Avelar, L. I. (2005). “Preliminary non-destructive assessment of moisture content, hydration and dielectric properties of Portland cement concrete.” MS thesis, Texas A&M Univ., College Station, Tex.
Bažant, Z. P., and Najjar, L. J. (1972). “Nonlinear water diffusion in nonsaturated concrete.” Mater. Struct., 5(25), 3–20.
Linsley, R. K., Kohler, M. A., and Paulhus, J. L. H. (1975). Hydrology for engineers, 2nd Ed., McGraw-Hill, New York.
Xin, D., Zollinger, D. G., and Allen, G. D. (1995). “A method to determine moisture diffusivity in concrete from measured moisture profiles.” J.Adv. Cem. Based Mater., 2(4), 138–144.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Copyright
© 2010 ASCE.
History
Received: Apr 30, 2009
Accepted: Oct 27, 2009
Published online: Feb 5, 2010
Published in print: Jul 2010
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.