Prediction of early compressive strength of mortars at different curing temperature and relative humidity by a modified maturity method

This paper presents an experimental and modeling study on the influence of curing temperature (T) and relative humidity (RH) on the development of early‐age compressive strength of cement mortars. By introducing an RH factor γRH into the age conversion factor of concrete, a modified maturity function was proposed considering both effects of T and RH on the mechanical properties of mortars. Test results proved that T and RH both had a considerable effect on the compressive strength of mortars, especially at the later stage of curing. The RH factor γRH increased as curing RH of mortars, and decreased with their curing age when the mortars were under an unsaturated state. The results also show that the factor γRH could be formulated by a modified hyperbola function. With the proposed RH modified maturity function, the prediction of compressive strength was verified having a high consistency with the experimental results.