During construction of reinforced concrete box arch ring cast-in-place with aid of arch centering, the environmental temperature variations usually have a huge impact on the arch centering and arch ring, including the displacement variations of arch centering and the stress variations of bars. In this paper, the finite element method was employed to study the effect of environmental temperature variations on the force and deformation of arch centering and the stress in the concrete arch ring. The results show that environmental temperature variations have little or nothing influence on the deformation of arch centering and great influence on the stress in arch centering and concrete. The stress in lower chords around arch crown increases and the stress in upper chords decreases with environmental temperature rising, which causing the stress in arch centering more uniform and compressive stress in the whole cross-section of arch ring. Meanwhile, the stress in bars around arch foot (that is high stress area) increases significantly and the tensile stress may come forth in the arch ring boot with environmental temperature dropping. The tensile stress may even cause cracks. Therefore, temperature enhancement is beneficial for the arch centering and arch ring, and on the contrary, temperature reduction is baleful. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of the Organizers of 2011 International Conference on Energy and Environmental Science.
