Abstract:

At present elastic creep model is often adopted to compute thermal stress of concrete dam. This method is feasible when thermal stress in dam is lower. But the creep deformation of concrete is no longer to be linear relation with thermal stress when thermal stress is larger than the half of concrete tensile strength; and the relation between the creep and the thermal stress shows a strong nonlinearity. Thermal stress is more close to concrete strength, the concrete creep deformation is more larger. A concrete nonlinear creep model is presented based on concrete creep test results and a corresponding algorithm is also presented. The computation results of an example and actual project show that the thermal stresses computed by elastic creep model and nonlinear creep model exist a little difference between them; and the thermal stress of the former is larger.

Key words: concrete dam, nonlinear creep, thermal stress, finite elements