How to avoid hair cracks in all kinds of floor concretes such as IPS floorings, Trimix floorings and roads?

I am trying to understand the (cracking behavior) cracks which started developing after sometime in all kinds of concrete floorings either Trimix or IPS with all grades of concrete upto M30 without flyash including non metallic floor harder dose upto 3-4kg/m2.Plz share anybody have any specific experience and knowledge about the subject.
 

Dnyan Deshmukh

Staff member
I am not expert in this type of work but did Trimix flooring.

Concrete tends to shrink due to various conditions and to reduce the shrinkage cracking we can do following;

Do re-troweling / Floater application only after concrete is initially set. In case of trimix the access water from concrete is expelled out with the help of vacuum mat.

After placing of the concrete in place, the capillary rise action do happens in concrete like clay, the water tries to come on the surface of the concrete which forms a capillaries in concrete and due to temperature at surface and windy conditions along with hydration process the water also start getting evaporated from surface of the concrete which leads to formation of cracks.

Delayed finishing or re-troweling or floater application on surface (like how we do in case of concrete cubes top surface finishing) helps is sealing all those capillaries in surface and sealing all formed cracks (visible and non visible with adjusted vision).

Most of the process does happens during initial setting time of concrete and can go longer up to final setting of the concrete.

Doing above application will clear most of the issues of cracking.

To prevent further cracking in concrete, we should start early curing of concrete by light sprinkling of water or covering the concrete surface with wet hessian cloth etc.

Hope this will help you in solving the issues. this way concrete is also becomes a waterproof.