THERMO-CHEMO-MECHANICAL ANALYSIS OF CONCRETE STRUCTURES CONSIDERING AGING AND DAMAGE

Resumo

This paper will present Finite Element models to study the thermo-chemo-mechanical behaviour of
concrete structures taking into account both aging and damage. The analysis is composed of two separated models,
namely: thermo-chemical and thermo-mechanical with damage. First, the thermo-chemical model will be briefly
presented. Then, the thermo-mechanical model with damage will be developed and the need for an incremental
constitutive equation for modeling aging of concrete will be discussed. In order to avoid mesh-dependency due to
strain localization, a nonlocal integral-type technique will be employed with few changes on the logical scheme
of the Finite Element model. Finally, the thermo-chemo-mechanical analysis will be presented for a theoretical
example: a concrete specimen. The results will show that residual stresses will take place due to both concrete
aging and thermal strains. This, in turn, might lead to the premature collapse of the structure.