Influence of curing conditions on the fatigue strength and cyclic creep of compressive concrete

Abstract

The paper discusses influence of curing conditions (steam and normal curing) on the fatigue strength and cyclic creep of compressive concrete. The cyclic loading (up to four million cycles) was subjected to 46 plain concrete prisms and 13 prestressed concrete beams. The comparative regression analysis of the high-cycle fatigue strength of compressive concrete, in terms of maximum stress level versus the number of load cycles (S-N curve) have been performed. The statistical analysis has shown that curing conditions had no significant effect on the S-N curve. On the contrary, curing conditions have significantly influenced the cyclic creep of compressive concrete. On average, the steam cured prisms had from 30 up to 80% larger strains than the specimens cured under natural conditions.