Nowadays, low water-to-cement (w/c) ratio has been put into widespread use in engineering practice. However, low w/c ratio may give rise to high self-desiccation, which may lead to the decrease of early-age cracking resistance. Investigating the impact of w/c ratio on cracking resistance is utterly meaningful to understand the cracking mechanism of concrete better. However, the corresponding investigations remain lacking, especially when the ring test is utilized. Ring tests for three concrete mixtures with different w/c ratios were conducted to investigate the early-age cracking resistance of concrete from multiple parameters in the present study. Results showed that: (1) the development rate of shrinkage of concrete for Mixture W50 was slower than Mixture W33 and W40; (2) the value and development rate of residual stress of concrete decreased when the w/c ratio increased; (3) the relaxed stress for all mixtures developed rapidly at very early age, and reached the maximum quickly; (4) the cracking resistance of concrete increased as the w/c ratio increased at early age.
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