MATHEMATICAL MODELING OF RELAXATION PROCESS IN CONCRETE

Abstract

The study provides experimental and theoretical investigations of stress relaxation in concrete under preset constant deformation of specimens and proposes an approach to the mathematical determination of stress relaxation in concrete. In addition to mathematical modeling, parallel long-term tests were performed on concrete specimens of the same class under four different regimes: determination of concrete creep in compression (concrete prism specimens in spring installations) according to GOST 24544; determination of concrete relaxation in compression (concrete prism specimens in special installations, determination of concrete creep in bending (concrete specimens-beams in rack-type installations working in bending and loaded with gravity load) according to GOST 24544; determination of concrete relaxation in bending (concrete specimen beams, with applied initial deformation in the middle of the span Determination of stress drop was performed using electronic dynamometers built between the specimen and the point of load application. A new concept, "relaxation measure Rm", was proposed. This value is similar in meaning to the creep measure and characterizes the degree of stress reduction in time due to relaxation when loaded with a unit relative strain. The introduction of relaxation measure allows to simplify the relaxation equation and significantly simplifies its solution. According to the results of calculation by the proposed computational algorithms for determining the relaxation measure in comparison with the experimental data, a satisfactory convergence of the results is obtained Qualitative conclusions about the applicability of the methodology of SP 63.13330 for reducing the modulus of elasticity of concrete in creep and relaxation.