The strength development of concrete largely depends on materials properties of cement, water, sand and aggregates and how all of these interact in a temperature-humidity-pressure managed environment.
In the construction industry, knowing how concrete develops real-time helps extremely. When to start using, forms, scheduling, post-tensioning, when to let traffic on roads, or when when to remove the heating applications all depend on having the right concrete strength.
Functional tests like break tests or prediction methods such as maturity are different, cross-functioning and co-supporting approaches on concrete strength determination.
Let’s see how these methods work.
How to estimate concrete strength
Before being able to estimate the concrete strength, you will need to perform a calibration to find the relationship between the maturity and the strength development. For monitoring your product, temperature sensors and instruments (nodes) are used to measure the temperature inside the concrete and to record this.
Identify locations
Before pouring the concrete, identify the places in the product that you want to monitor. You can do this by individual choice, but better if you follow standard guidelines.
Embed sensors
Place sensors in place at the monitoring location. Never use plastics or other materials that are not compatible with your recipe.
Connect to the instrument
Connect the temperature sensors to the instrument.
Pour
Once all the sensors have been installed successfully, pour the concrete.
Wait for results
concrete.fit shows strength automatically.