Issue |
MATEC Web Conf.
Volume 364, 2022
International Conference on Concrete Repair, Rehabilitation and Retrofitting (ICCRRR 2022)
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Article Number | 02016 | |
Number of page(s) | 9 | |
Section | Concrete Durability Aspects - Service Life Modelling and Prediction of Durability | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/matecconf/202236402016 | |
Published online | 30 September 2022 |
Modelling the cracking of fresh concrete
1
Stellenbosch University, South Africa
2
University of Pretoria, South Africa
* Corresponding author: rcom@sun.ac.za
The cracking of fresh concrete, while still in a plastic state, includes both plastic settlement and plastic shrinkage cracking, which starts once the concrete is cast to around the final setting time. The cracking process is complex and is influenced by numerous factors which include the climate, mix proportions, element geometry and construction procedures. Preventing these cracks therefore remains a problem in practice. One of the reasons for this is the lack of a model that can be used to determine the location, timing and severity of the cracking before the cracking occurs. The main challenges with such a model are the testing of the fresh concrete to determine the tensile material properties, the appropriate constitutive law needed, and the time dependency of material properties as well as the anisotropic volume change. This paper presents a finite element model that uses a total strain smeared cracking approach and accounts for both the time dependency of material properties and the anisotropic volume change. The model gives an adequate representation of the cracking behaviour of fresh concrete for extreme climates but not for normal to moderate climates, mainly due to the size discrepancy between the interior and surface cracks during experiments as well as the relaxation of stresses that are not accounted for in the model. A parameter study showed that both the settlement and shrinkage strains significantly influence and therefore govern the size of the final plastic crack, while the material mechanical properties only influence the time of crack onset and rate of crack widening.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2022
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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