Engineering Structures
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/engstruct
ISISE Institute for Sustainability and Innovation in Structural Engineering, University of Minho, School of Engineering, Civil Engineering Department, Azurm Campus, 4800-058
Guimares, Portugal
b
LABEST Laboratory for the Concrete Technology and Structural Behaviour, Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal
article
info
Article history:
Received 26 November 2010
Received in revised form
21 April 2011
Accepted 1 July 2011
Available online 2 August 2011
Keywords:
Cement hydration
Service life conditions
Differential shrinkage
Cracking
Numerical simulation
abstract
Current practices of structural design in reinforced concrete (RC) structures usually account for stresses
caused by phenomena such as heat of hydration and drying shrinkage in a quite simplified manner. The
present paper aims to evaluate the consequences of explicitly considering self-induced stresses, which
actually vary significantly within structural cross-sections, combined with stresses caused by external
loads. The used numerical framework involves the explicit calculation of the temperature field in concrete,
with proper account for the heat of hydration of cement. Simultaneously, the moisture field in concrete is
computed in order to ascertain the relative humidity changes in the pore structure caused by drying, and
the inherent shrinkage strains. Stress calculations are made with due consideration of the evolution of
mechanical properties of concrete as a function of the equivalent age, as well as relevant phenomena like
creep, concrete cracking and influence of reinforcement. Two separate groups of numerical applications
are presented, checking influence of the self-induced stresses: a unrestrained concrete prism usually used
for shrinkage measurement, and concrete slabs subjected to external loads. Particularly for the second set
of applications, the obtained results (with explicit consideration of the differential effects of self-induced
stresses) are compared, in terms of cracking loads and crack propagation, to those that would be obtained
by using the simplified design approach based on considering uniform shrinkage fields in concrete. It is
found that the behaviour of both formulations is quite similar after crack stabilization, but may be quite
distinct in the crack propagation phase.
2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
The existing methodologies for practical analysis and design of
RC structures comprise several simplifying assumptions, namely
concerning the stress state induced by heat of hydration and
drying shrinkage. Actually, due to the exothermic nature of
cement hydration reactions, concrete members endure nonuniform internal temperature distributions, usually with hotter
regions in the core and cooler ones close to the external surfaces.
Total or partial restrictions to the volumetric deformations
associated to these thermal fields induce stresses in concrete,
whose importance is usually disregarded by designers, most
of the time without a quantitative notion of their magnitude.
Corresponding author. Tel.: +351 93 840 4554; fax: +351 253 510 217.
E-mail addresses: miguel.azenha@civil.uminho.pt, miguel.azenha@gmail.com
(M. Azenha), cfsousa@fe.up.pt (C. Sousa), rfaria@fe.up.pt (R. Faria),
asneves@fe.up.pt (A. Neves).
1 Tel.: +351 22 508 1914.
2 Tel.: +351 22 508 1950.
3 Tel.: +351 22 508 1879.
0141-0296/$ see front matter 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.engstruct.2011.07.008
(1)
Ea
RT
(2)
(3)
where qT is the heat flux per unit area, Tb is the boundary surface
temperature and Te is the environmental temperature, comprises
a mixed convectionradiation boundary transfer coefficient h [15].
The calculated temperatures are used as inputs for the mechanical model, where thermal strains of concrete are computed accounting for the material coefficient of thermal expansion (T ).
Even though this coefficient is known to be variable during the first
hours after casting [16,17], the applications envisaged in this paper
do not involve significant temperature changes at early ages, and
thus it was decided to use a constant value for T .
Also, the evolution of temperatures at each point in the structure allows computing the equivalent age teq (useful for updating
the age-dependent mechanical properties), based on the following
Arrhenius-type equation
t
teq =
ERa
1
T1
T ( )
ref
(4)
= (DH H ) + H S
H
(5)
S
where 0 H 1, DH is the moisture diffusion coefficient and H
relates to the H drop in the pore structure due to self-desiccation.
As the applications addressed in this paper pertain to ordinary
concrete, with relatively high water-to-cement ratios, the effect of
S has been neglected. Coefficient DH was considered to depend on
H
H as defined in MC90 [2]
1 H
DH = D1 H +
2. Thermohygromechanical model
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1 + [(1 H ) / (1 HC )]n
with H =
D0
D1
(6)
(7)
(8)
where sh, is the ultimate drying shrinkage strain, that is, upon
complete drying at infinite time (valid in the scope of this paper, as
self-desiccation due to autogenous shrinkage is being neglected).
It should be highlighted that sh,pot does not necessarily represent
the real shrinkage strain at a given point; in fact, it is the shrinkage
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Fig. 1. Concrete stressstrain diagrams normal to the crack: (a) outside the
effective area; (b) inside the effective area.
1
E0 ( t )
1
E0 (t )
(t )m (t t )n
(9)
yc = sy t
fct
Es s
(10)
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Fig. 2. (a) Material parameters for heat generation; (b) E-modulus evolution.
3. Applications
3.2. Drying shrinkage prism
3.1. Overview/material properties
The applications to be presented regard firstly to an unrestrained drying shrinkage prism, and then to a slab under the combined effects of self-induced stresses (heat of hydration and drying
shrinkage) and externally applied uniformly distributed loads.
Material properties in all the examples concern solely to normal
strength concrete, which is still the most widely used in current
construction.
In terms of heat of hydration generation, the thermal output of
a dosage of 250 kg m3 of cement type I 52.5R is represented in
Fig. 2(a), which also indicates the applicable material parameters
A, Ea and Qfinal . Other assumed relevant thermal properties of
concrete are k = 2.6 W m1 K1 and c = 2400 kJ m3 K1 .
The boundary transfer coefficient corresponding to a direct contact
between concrete and the environment is expressed by the
standard value h = 10 W m2 K1 , and the initial temperature of
concrete is 20 C. The values used for thermal properties k, c and
h were adopted in accordance to the conditions of a previous case
study of a wind tower foundation [35], where ordinary concrete
was used in outdoor conditions, with an average wind speed under
5 km/h. The effects of solar radiation and night cooling have been
neglected in this study.
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Fig. 3. Prism: (a) symmetry planes; (b) schematic representation; (c) FE mesh.
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Fig. 6. Left column: vectors of principal stresses (red colour corresponding to tensile stresses); right column: stresses y (Pa). (For interpretation of the references to colour
in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this article.)
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Fig. 8. Evolution of cracking strains (vectors normal to the cracks, with length
proportional to the crack opening).
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Fig. 11. Results at the surface and the interior (core): (a) temperatures; (b) relative humidity.
Fig. 13. Concrete longitudinal normal stresses: (a) until 4 days; (b) until 4000 days.
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Fig. 14. Concrete normal stresses, considering both differential (continuous lines)
and uniform (dashed lines) drying shrinkage.
Fig. 16. Nm curves for imposed axial deformations at different ages, considering
both differential (continuous lines) and uniform (dashed lines) drying shrinkage.
Fig. 15. Nm curves for imposed axial deformations at three different ages.
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along the slabs thickness, instead of the differential ones reproduced by the continuous lines in Fig. 14: except for the case of
loading at the age of 28 days, different Mm diagrams are
obtained during the crack propagation phase, which is relevant for
the service life performance of slabs. For the case of loading applied
at 48 years the apparent cracking bending moment is smaller
when computed with the simplified shrinkage model than with the
differential one, in opposition to what was observed at the age of 88
days. This is due to the fact that in the former case the differential
shrinkage model predicts occurrence of compressive stresses in the
surface areas, which retards crack formation.
4. Conclusions
Fig. 18. Mm curves for imposed curvatures at different ages, considering both
differential (continuous lines) and uniform (dashed lines) drying shrinkage.
A numerical framework for predicting the service life performance of RC structures was presented, which accounts for the
self-induced effects due to the cement hydration heat release,
as well as to the development of non-uniform drying shrinkage
strains. The field of concrete temperatures induced by cement
hydration is solved with a thermal submodel, and the drying
shrinkage strains are computed on the basis of the relative humidity predicted in the concrete volume by a hygro submodel. Both
submodels are solved as uncoupled, feeding thereafter a mechanical submodel where concrete stresses are computed with due regard to the thermohygro strains, the equilibrium with external
loads, the evolving material properties of concrete (based on the
equivalent age concept) and creep.
Two applications were presented to illustrate the plausibility of
the numerical framework predictions, together with its potential
for application in real structures: an unrestrained drying shrinkage
prism and a RC slab subject to the combined effect of self-induced
stresses and externally applied loads.
Results obtained for the shrinkage prism showed non-uniform
residual stresses associated to heat of hydration and drying
shrinkage, with significant variations in their intensities, including
sign reversals. Evolution of the computed strains revealed quite
coherent with the shape of predictive curves of Eurocode 2, thus
confirming the plausibility of results.
The analysis of the RC slab, with due consideration of softening
and cracking of plain concrete, as well as tension-stiffening of RC,
allowed interesting conclusions to be drawn in regard to the effect
of self-induced stresses on the loaddeformation curves when load
was applied at different ages. It was observed that for loads applied
at instants when important self-induced surface tensile stresses
were already installed in concrete, the structural response of the
slab was significantly different from that corresponding to a zero
stress initial stage, or even from that assuming the simplification
of uniform distribution of shrinkage strains. It was shown that
differential shrinkage stresses lead to a decrease of the calculated
axial cracking loads, regardless the age of loading. Therefore,
the standard procedure suggested by design codes such as the
Eurocode 2 (based on uniform shrinkage strains along the cross
section) underestimates the concrete cracking risk. Codes could be
improved by suggesting reduced cracking loads for design checks
in which lower cracking loads are unfavourable. Moreover, nonuniform shrinkage stresses also cause a decrease of the stiffness
of the ascending branch of the N m relationship, which is more
pronounced for loads applied during the initial drying phase, when
important superficial tensile stresses occur due to differential
shrinkage.
The numerical results also showed that self-induced stresses
are responsible for important stiffness reductions in slabs subjected to increasing bending moments. Furthermore, the flexural tensile strength of slabs is significantly affected by differential
shrinkage stresses. For that reason, the calculation of cracking loads
based on the flexural tensile strength (an hypothesis admitted by
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