A comprehensive test series has been undertaken in the Expert Centre in order to investigate the applicability of Freisleben-Hansens maturity concept from 1977 [1] to modern concretes exposed to aggressive environments. This involves an examination of the influence of the curing temperature on the development of properties such as compressive strength and resistance against chloride ingress.
Preliminary results indicate that the original maturity function probably needs to be revised in order to be consistent with the types of concretes used nowadays. The investigations have also revealed some very interesting and surprising behaviour regarding to the chloride migration coefficient (CMC): For pure CEM I concretes, the CMC at similar maturity increases with increasing curing temperature, whereas the opposite is observed for the fly ash concretes, i.e. the resistance to chloride ingress is greatly improved for fly ash concrete by high-temperature initial curing. These findings have been confirmed by a series of experiments with heat curing of concrete in isolated form work.
Presentations of the abovementioned results can be seen here:
Development of properties as a function of temperature_NCR workshop Oslo (854 KB)
Development of properties as a function of temperature_Example of practical application (892 KB)
[1] FREISLEBEN-HANSEN P AND PEDERSEN J, Maturity Computer for Controlled Curing and Hardening of Concrete. Nordisk Betong, Vol. 1, 19-34, 1977.