Residual Compressive Strength of High-Strength Concrete Exposed to Elevated Temperatures

Abstract

High-strength concrete (HSC) has several well-known technical, aesthetic, and economic advantages over normal-strength concrete (NSC), which explains the increasing popularity of the former material in the construction domain. As in the case of NSC, however, high temperature adversely affects HSC mechanical properties even more than in NSC, as indicated by the many studies performed so far on HSC at high temperature (hot properties) or past a thermal cycle at high temperature (residual properties). Since many code provisions concerning concrete properties versus high temperature were developed for ordinary concrete and the available models (in terms of stress-strain relationship) come mostly from the tests on NSC—as the tests on HSC are less numerous—developing predictive relationships for HSC exposed to high temperature is still an open issue, especially with reference to many parameters affecting concrete compressive strength, like temperature as such, heating rate, water-to-binder ratio, and strength in compression, to cite the most relevant parameters. To this purpose, a large database (more than 600 tests) is examined in this paper, which is focused on HSC residual properties and on the variables affecting its residual strength. Available design models from various guidelines, standards, codes, and technical reports are tested against the database, and new regression-based models and design formulae are proposed for HSC strength in compression, after the exposure to high temperature.