Mitigation of early age cracking of concrete for bridge decks

In order to reduce reconstruction time and costs in order to better serve the general public a need has arisen for longer service life when considering concrete bridge decks for highway applications. Service life of concrete bridge decks is often cut short indirectly, due to deterioration mechanisms that exist at early ages of the concrete. Early age deterioration mechanisms such as early age cracking cause the reinforcing steel rebar to be exposed prematurely to the elements of the environment, which causes for lower service life of the bridge deck through corrosion of the reinforcing steel in the bridge deck. In harsh environments, such as the Midwestern United States, the premature exposure can cause devastating effects to service life. In order to prevent early deterioration, it is imperative to examine early age hardened properties of the concrete and fresh properties of the concrete in order to produce the best defect-free bridge deck available which will promote long service life. In order to examine early age hardened properties and fresh properties of concrete to be used for bridge decks on the Illinois Tollway, laboratory testing was performed by CTL Group and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Through extensive laboratory testing, results indicate that many mitigation strategies are able to improve early age cracking in concrete for bridge decks. Through early age mitigation it is possible to decrease the probability of early age deterioration in concrete bridge decks and promote service life.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Civil Engineering

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2013

Author dc:creator

• Wilson, William Oliver

Contributors dc:contributor

• Lange, David A.

• Concrete
• Cement
• Lightweight aggregate
• Shrinkage reducing admixture
• Optimized gradation
• Bridge deck
• Internal curing
• Uni-axial creep-shrinkage test
• Restrained shrinkage testing machine
• Early age cracking
• Deterioration
• Shrinkage
• Creep

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2013 William Wilson

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/44112

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/44112