FACTORS AFFECTING CREEP

Type of Cement
Creep is defined as the increase in strain under a sustained
constant stress after taking into account other time-dependent
deformations not associated with stress, viz. shrinkage, swelling
and thermal deformations.

Type of cement affects creep in a manner as it influences

strength of concrete at the time of application of load. On this
basis, both Portland cement lead to sensibly the same creep, but
the rate of gain of strength has same effect.

The finer the cement higher is its gypsum required, so

that regrinding a cement in laboratory without addition of gypsum
produce an improper and retarded cement, which exhibits high
shrinkage and high creep.

Extremely fine cement with specific surface up to 740

kg/m lead to high early creep but lower creep after one or two
2

years under load. This is probably due to the high gain of strength
of the finest cement with resultant rapid drop in actual
stress/strength ratio.

Creep increases in order for following type cements:

1) Rapid hardening cement,

2) Low heat cement,
3) Ordinary Portland cement.

Use of blast furnace slag leads to a lower basic creep but

higher drying shrinkage. Creep of concrete made with expansive
cement is longer than that of concrete made with Portland
cement.
 FACTORS AFFECTING SHRINKAGE

Type of Cement
Shrinkage is caused by loss of water by evaporation or by
hydration of cement, and also by carbonation.

The effect of shrinkage is to cause cracks in the concrete.

Ordinary Portland cement does not show good extensibility. In this
respect low heat cement or Portland pozzolana cement will have
higher extensibility. It may not be out of place to point out that
addition of a certain quantity of lime will improve the extensibility
of ordinary cement concrete. The superiority of lime mortar for
internal plaster over cement mortar is from the point of view of
the superior extensibility of lime mortar over cement mortar by
about 7 times. A continuous surface, like plaster on the wall,
undergoes tremendous change in volume and as such cements
mortar having low extensibility, is not able to withstand the
volume change without cracking, where lime mortar or gauged
mortar having higher extensibility gives better performance.

Thus, we can conclude that Ordinary Portland cement has

lower tendency to shrink than low heat cement and Portland
pozzolana cement. Lime or gauged cement has high tendency to
shrink without forming any cracks.