Deformation behaviour of self-compacting concrete under tensile loading

The deformation behaviour of self-compacting concretes of the compressive strength classes C30/37, C45/55 and C60/75 according to the European Standard EN 206-1 under sustained tensile loading was investigated up to 2.5 years. The long-term tensile strength was estimated to be 69% of the short-term tensile strength, determined at an age of 28 days. Load-free shrinkage has been measured on companion specimens. The usual way to determine creep is to subtract the measured shrinkage strain and the elastic or initial strain from the measured total strain. In doing so, a phenomenon was discovered which is called stress-induced shrinkage. It turned out that the drying shrinkage was larger for loaded specimens than for load-free specimens. Similar results have been found earlier. It seemed that the stress-induced shrinkage tends to increase with decreasing compressive strength. An important practical consequence is arising from stress-induced shrinkage: structural elements subjected to tensile␣load, tend to dry and to shrink faster than one␣would expect based on the assumption of load-free shrinkage. In the case of sustained deformation, this would raise the risk of cracking and would have a negative effect on the durability of a concrete structure. An erratum to this article can be found at