A series of drying shrinkage tests of the concrete members that are restrained externally by steel bars or channels has been carried out systematically to investigate the influence of degree of restraint, mix proportion of concrete, size of the cross section, moist curing time and additional bars on the shrinkage cracking.
In addition, an analytical method to estimate the shrinkage stress as well as the cracking time is presented herein.
The good agreement between the estimated values and measured ones is obtained.