PREDICTING CREEP DEFORMATION OF CONCRETE: A COMPARISON OF RESULTS FROM DIFFERENT INVESTIGATIONS

Creep deformation of concrete is often responsible for excessive deflection at service loads which can compromise the performance of elements within a structure. Hence, the realistic prediction of both the magnitude and rate of creep strain is an important requirement of the design process. Although laboratory tests may be undertaken to determine the deformation properties of concrete, these are time-consuming, often expensive and generally not a practical option. Therefore, relatively simple empirically based national design code models are relied upon to predict the magnitude of creep strain. This paper reviews the accuracy of creep predictions yielded by eight commonly used international “code type ” models, all of which do not consider the same material parameters and yield a range of predicted strains, when compared with actual strains measured on a range of concretes in seventeen different investigations