Effect of Water-to-Cement Ratios on Performance of Concrete with Prewetted Lightweight Aggregates

Abstract

Lightweight aggregates (LWAs), as a popular material for internal curing (IC), have been extensively utilized in internally cured concrete (ICC). This paper investigated the development of mechanical properties, restrained shrinkage, quantitative stress relaxation, and tensile creep of ICC with prewetted LWAs under the condition of diverse w/c ratios (0.33, 0.40, and 0.50) by experimental investigations. Besides, the mixture proportion without IC was designed to investigate the effect of IC on the performance of the concrete mixture with a w/c ratio of 0.50. Corresponding results show that increasing the w/c ratio diminished the mechanical properties of ICC. A decrease in residual stress and stress rate was related to an increase in the w/c ratio. Relaxed stress and tensile creep increased with the w/c ratio increasing in ICC in the initial days. The introduction of IC decreased the mechanical properties, restrained shrinkage, stress rate, relaxed stress, and tensile creep of the concrete mixture with a w/c ratio of 0.50. The relationship between creep and relaxation coefficients was established, which contributed to the accurate evaluation of tensile stress development of ICC with prewetted LWAs under restrained conditions.