Toward the Development of a Performance-Related Specification for Concrete Shrinkage

Abstract

Although the opportunity to replace prescriptive codes and specifications with those based on performance has been widely discussed, currently only limited tools are capable of providing performance-based description of concrete behavior. This paper introduces a stochastic approach to relate the free shrinkage of concrete with anticipated cracking performance. This method proposes that shrinkage performance grades could be established to allow the designer to limit the probability of cracking based on free shrinkage as a first step. The probabilistic assessment of concrete cracking performance is further obtained from Monte Carlo simulations in which material properties (e.g., shrinkage, modulus, and strength) are treated as random variables with assigned predefined distributions. As a result of these simulations, user-friendly diagrams are obtained that can be further used by transportation agencies and contractors to predict field performance of concrete.