Micromechanical Modeling of Concrete at Early Age

Abstract

The focus of this research is a micromechanical characterization of Portland cement concrete at early age (less than 28 days). Concrete's viscoelastic properties change significantly at early age due to solidification of its matrix component. Bazant's solidification theory models concrete as a material solidifying in time. This approach is generalized to a three-dimensional characterization of a composite material with a solidifying matrix and elastic inclusions. An integral constitutive relationship was obtained using a generalized correspondence principle and homogenization techniques for elastic composite materials. In light of this approach, effective creep properties of composite spherical assemblage with an aging matrix are obtained. In addition, the elastic Hashin-Monteiro model is generalized to account for the effect of the interfacial transition zone properties on concrete creep. An effective computational platform was developed to evaluate operator expressions in order to obtain relaxation and creep functions numerically. Through numerical examples, it is shown that triaxial generalization of Bazant's solidification model enables robust and computationally efficient prediction of creep deformations in Portland cement concrete.