Coupled Thermo-Mechanical Simulation of Cracking in Early-Age Concrete With a Phase-Field Variational Model
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.70567/mc.v42.ocsid8326Keywords:
Early age, Fracture, Phase-field, Energetic formulationAbstract
A variational phase-field model for thermomechanical cracking processes in early age concrete is derived, integrating hydration and aging phenomena during the curing stage. The proposed formulation defines a discrete solution to the thermomechanical problem, accounting for the heat generation induced by cement hydration and the evolving properties of concrete throughout the hydration process. The chemical–thermomechanical crack propagation is assumed to result from the quasi-static evolution of the global minima of a mixed-type energy functional that incorporates elastic strain energy, dissipation energy associated with the evolution of the phase-field fracture variable and thermochemical dissipation energy. Numerical results are presented showing that the hydration process induces cracking due to the thermal gradients inherent to the exothermic reaction.
References
Briffaut M., Benboudjema F., Torrenti J., y Nahas G. Numerical analysis of the thermal active restrained shrinkage ring test to study the early age behavior of massive concrete structures. Engineering Structures, 33:1390–1401, 2011. https://doi.org/httpss://doi.org/10.1016/j.engstruct.2010.12.044.
Carlson D.E. Linear Thermoelasticity. Springer, 1973.
Faria R., Azenha M., y Figueiras J. Modelling of concrete at early ages: Aplication to an externally restrained slab. Cement and Concrete Composites, 28:572–585, 2006. Fremond M. Non–Smooth Thermomechanics. Springer, 2002.
Miehe C., Hofacker M., y Welschinger F. A phase field model for rateindependent crack propagation: robust algorithmic implementation based on operator splits. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 199:2765–2778, 2010.
Nguyen T.T., Waldmann D., y Bui T. Computational chemo-thermo-mechanical coupling phase-field model for complex fracture induced by earlu-age shrinkage and hydration heat in cement-based materials. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering, 348:1– 28, 2019a. https://doi.org/httpss://doi.org/10.1016/j.cma.2019.01.012.
Nguyen T.T., Waldmann D., y Bui T. Phase field simulation of early-age fracture in cementbased materials. International Journal of Solids and Structures, 191:157–172, 2019b. https://doi.org/httpss://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijsolstr.2019.12.003.
Ulm F.J. y Coussy O. Modeling of Thermochemomechanical couplings of concrete at early ages. Journal of Engineering Mechanics, 121:785–794, 1995. https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)0733-9399(1995)121:7(785).
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Argentine Association for Computational Mechanics
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This publication is open access diamond, with no cost to authors or readers.
Only those papers that have been accepted for publication and have been presented at the AMCA congress will be published.
