Early age strains and self-stresses of expansive concrete members under uniaxial restraint conditions

•Design of high expansion energy capacity concrete able to prestress structures.•Cumulative force induced by restraint influences on restrained strains progress.•Cumulative force induced by restraint is considered as an externally applied load.•Proposed modified strains development model (MSDM) allows to estimate self-stress.•Validity of the proposed MSDM is confirmed by the experimental data. Models for restrained strains and self-stresses estimation based on the concepts of the conservation law of chemical energy and initial strains calculation in the expansive concrete members are considered, together with their advantages and disadvantages. A modified strains development model (MSDM) is proposed, based on the initial strains calculation approach and extended by taking into account cumulative force induced by the reinforcement as an additional restraint for development of expansion strains. Validity of the proposed MSDM is confirmed by experimental results obtained from tests on uniaxially symmetrically reinforced high expansion energy capacity concrete members.