The Effect of Initial Temperature of Self-Compacting Concrete on Its Long-Term Mechanical Properties

One of the important issues in the production of concrete is environmental variability that affects the concrete and elements constructed from this material. Due to the importance of different characteristics of concrete in short- and long-term conditions, this article aims to investigate the influence of initial temperature conditions of self-compacting concrete on its long-term characteristics and determine the initial optimal temperature of concrete. For these purposes, several experiments under three temperature conditions of 5, 20, and 40 degree-of-Celsius were conducted to evaluate the rheology and mechanical properties of fresh concrete in the range of 7 and 28 days. In these experiments, alternative mineral admixtures of cement such as micro-silica, fly ash, and zeolite were used to build the concrete specimens. Results demonstrate that the mechanical properties of the specimens increase with increasing initial temperature in the short term, while such properties significantly decrease in the long term compared to the specimens constructed under lower initial temperature. Moreover, the fluidity of self-compacting concrete increases with increasing initial temperature.