Concrete slabs provide a variety of benefits for residential and public use. They give sufficient strength, durability, and the required slip-skid resistance to support pedestrians and vehicular traffic. The concrete material itself presents the flexibility to form and fit surfaces of any size, shape, and ground conditions. For creative owners with high aesthetic demands, customized concrete slabs help achieve various levels of decorative complication with special surface features. These factors combined have made concrete slabs, especially for paving purposes, arguably the most popular application today.

Compared to other structural applications, making a concrete pavement for residential purposes is generally simple. An owner with a Do-It-Yourself mindset can cast a footpath or a driveway then put it to use within days, with or without professional supports. Such a convenience, however, to a certain extent has associated with greater deviations. Unlike industrial floors or motorways which can easily comply with standard design and construction practices, ensuring so for residential concrete slabs has shown to be more challenging.

A quick survey was conducted on one single street, approximately 1 km long, from a train station in Sydney (NSW, Australia) to a nearby shopping centre. Along that short walking distance, over 50 cases of cracking were recorded on both newly built and long-term concrete slabs.

Not all cracking in concrete slabs causes an instant interruption of service and immediately compromises user's safety. They can start as narrow, shallow lines at first, but will gradually grow deeper and wider over time. Along with the crack growth, foreign materials penetrate, some of which contain deleterious chemical substances which may react with concrete materials inside and cause additional damages. Once this happens, little can be done to reverse it. The whole service life of these slab elements, as a result, may be significantly shortened.