The influence of Shrinkage-Reducing Agent on the early-age shrinkage under the different curing system and mechanical properties of concrete

Research on shrinkage reducing admixtures was first initiated during the 1980’s in Japan and led to the development of the first generation of SRA [1-2]. Today, several various SRAs are commercially available, and although they do not exactly have the same chemical composition, they are similar in nature and all serve to reduce the surface tension of concrete’s pore fluid [3]. During the past 30 years, various research studies [4-11] have been performed to evaluate the performance of SRAs and to quantify their shrinkage reduction capacity in concrete mixtures. It has been shown that by lowering the surface tension of pore fluid, SRA can reduce drying shrinkage of concrete by up to 50% [5, 10].