Experimental Setup for Measuring Long-Term Behavior of Green Reinforced Concrete Beams

The behavior of reinforced concrete under long-term loading is an important topic when designing concrete structures. Creep and shrinkage of concrete and long-term deflections of concrete structures, mainly reinforced concrete beams, have been studied for many decades but because of the long-term nature of these tests, existing experiments are relatively scarce. More importantly, there are significant challenges when carrying out these tests. These include achieving optimal beam design to ensure a realistic stress distribution with a developed cracked state, measuring deflections from self-weight, adequately measuring elastic deflections and strains, and instantaneously applying the imposed load. The problem is exacerbated with the advent of sustainable structural concretes containing recycled and waste materials—green concretes; they possess specific properties and experimental results for these concretes are even scarcer.