Estudio experimental del comportamiento de vigas de hormigón armado, descimbradas a tempranas edades

Esperimental study of the begaviour of reinforced concrete beams demolded at early ages

In this paper, the results of tests carried out over reinforced concrete beams early demolded are presented. Two series of 8 simply supported rinforced concrete beams of 3,60 m span length have been tested. All the beams had a rectangular cross section of 20 x 30 cm, and were designed to resist a total service load of 20 kN/m. Two types of tests have been made for each of the two series, named Creep tests and Failure tests. Crep tests were oriented to study the time dependent deflections in function of the age of loading. Failure tests were oriented to study the evolution of instantaneous deformability and strength of the beam as a function of the concrete age at loading. Therefore, the influence of the age of concrete when unshoring, on the short and long term behaviour of the structure, has been determined both at service load and ultimate load levels. Experimental results have been comarped with analytical predictions based on cement codes, and conclusions are drawn.