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Plastic shrinkage is one of the most important parameter which must be considered in hot weather concreting. If plastic shrinkage is not prevented, cracking will be significant, especialy if silica fume is used in the mix. In this paper, the effect of silica fume in bleeding and evaporation was investigated in laboratory. The results showed that in restrained shrinkage, beside relative humidity, temperature and wind velocity, sun rediation also is very important factor in evaporation rate. It is found that under solar radition condition, the evaporation was much larger than the estimated value in ACI 305 Nomogram. The rate of evaporaion under solar radiation was about two folds of evaporation rate under shade condition. The results showed that in terms of crack initiation time, crack width and total cracking area, concrete containing silica fume is more severe than concrete with no silica fume. Reduction of water cement ratio in concrete with silica fume makes the concrete more sensitive in cracking. The results of this project also showed that the severity of the cracking is not related only to rate of bleeding but all environmental factors including like sun radiation or shading and also mix compositions have important roles.

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An experimental program was conducted to determine the effects of geosynthetic reinforcement on mitigating reflection cracking in asphalt overlays. The objectives of this study were to asses the effects of geosynthetics inclusion and its placement location on the accumulation of permanent deformation. To simulate an asphalt pavement overlaid on top of a crack in a concrete or asphalt pavement, an asphalt mixture specimen was placed on top of two discontinuous concrete or asphalt concrete blocks with 100 mm height. Four types of specimens were prepared with respect to the location of geogrid: (I) Unreinforced samples, which served as control specimen, (II) Samples with geogrid embedded on the concrete or asphalt concrete block, (III) Samples with geogrid embeded one-thired depth of asphalt concrete from bottom, (IV) Samples with geogrid embedded in the middle of the asphalt beam. Each specimen was then placed on the rubber foundation in order to be tested. Simulated- repeated loading was applied to the asphalt mixture specimens using a hydraulic dynamic loading frame. Each experiment was recorded in its entirety by a video camera to allow the physical observation of reflection crack formation and propagation. This study revealed that geosynthetic reinforced specimens exhibited resistance to reflection cracking. Placing the geogrid at the one- third depth of overlay thickness had the maximum predicted service life. Results indicate a significant reduction in the rate of crack propagation and rutting in reinforced samples compared to unreinforced samples.

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Because thin plate reinforced concrete members such as walls and slabs are greatly influenced by the drying shrinkage, cracks can occur in these members due to the restraint of the volume change caused by drying shrinkage. Therefore, the control of cracking due to drying shrinkage is very important in building construction that the thin plate members are frequently used. However, few researches of estimating shrinkage cracking in RC walls have been executed, and the cracking control design of RC walls has been conducted based on the experience rather than the quantitative design method. In this study, the practical cracking prediction method using equivalent bond-loss length Lb was proposed for the quantitative drying shrinkage crack control of RC wall. The calculated values using proposed method were compared with the experimental results from uniaxial restrained shrinkage cracking specimens and the investigative values from the field study. In general, the results of this method were close to those of the experiment and the field study.