Thermo-mechanical behavior of a thin concrete shell during its early age

This paper reports a case study of the behavior of a concrete shell during the early stages of concrete using a two-stage computational model. First, the thermo-chemical problem is solved using a heat transfer model. The temperature evolution depends on the hydration of the concrete, which is derived from a phenomenological model. The temperatures thus obtained are next used in a mechanical model to compute the stress fields. Both models are uncoupled. The stresses are used to evaluate possible cracking of the shell. The analysis is carried out using a general-purpose finite element package for both stages of the analysis. For the case considered, the high hoop stresses computed indicate that significant meridional cracking can develop in the shell due to its early age behavior.