Dehydration creep of concrete at high temperatures

In this paper, a new approach for modeling the transient component of the load induced thermal deformation is proposed in order to predict the concrete behavior when subjected to high temperatures with a concomitant applied load. This component is conventionally referred to as transient creep strain. In this approach, the transient creep strain is split into a drying creep component and a newly introduced dehydration creep strain. The former is related to the evolution of the hygrometric state of the material, while the latter is related to the material dehydration which results from the heating induced chemical transformations. Therefore, a dehydration variable is defined and then introduced as a driving variable of the transient creep for temperatures exceeding 105 degrees C. This thermo-hydro-damage model is implemented using a finite element code and numerical simulations are performed and compared to experimental findings in order to assess the predictive character of the proposed model.