Study on Compressive Strength Prediction for Steam Curing

Steam curing process is generally adopted for precast concrete products to improve productivity. For setting reasonable production cycles and selecting economical formulation, it is important to predict the strength of mortar / concrete at early stage. Compressive strength estimation by the Maturity method is being widely used in conventional research. However, it is pointed out that accuracy is relatively low for estimating the strength of concrete under steam curing condition. Therefore, in this study, a relation between effective material ages based on the Maturity and Arrhenius's law and both initial and long-term strength were evaluated. As a result, it was confirmed that the Arrhenius's law shows higher estimation accuracy than the Maturity method. Furthermore, it was confirmed that the prediction method using effective material ages based on the Arrhenius's law which takes the activation energy into consideration has higher estimation accuracy.