Assessment of Risk of Thermal Cracking in Hardening Concrete

Abstract

At the Luleå University of Technology, research has been performed on thermal stresses and thermal cracking in maturing concrete in the last decade. Laboratory tests have been carried out providing material data for calibration of a proposed theoretical model for thermal stress analysis in young concrete. The laboratory tests included creep tests, free thermal volume change tests and relaxation tests. In the theoretical model, the thermal properties and the transient mechanical properties of the young maturing concrete as well as the restraint within the concrete element are considered. The model has been implemented in a computer program permitting the analysis of different concreting scenarios of which some examples are shown. In the examples, influences of different measures against cracking as well as influences of changes in temperature conditions, restraint, and mechanical behavior of concrete are quantified. For some cases in the computational studies it may be concluded that, for control of early‐...