New phenomenological creep model for predicting creep of concrete with silica fume

Creep phenomenon affects the stability and integrity of concrete structures. An inaccurate prediction of these strains may lead to the appearance of cracks and excessive deflections which may cause in some cases the demolition of structures. In fact, the measured values of these uncontrolled strains appear often to be clearly different and larger than the expected ones. Therefore, an accurate prediction of concrete deformations is a necessity. As a matter of fact, the codified descriptions of this phenomenon are unreliable and don't consider the effect of admixtures. The physical nature of creep is not well understood and almost all creep models are mainly of empirical nature. To overcome this issue, a study of the correlation between different parameters affecting concrete creep is performed and a new model for predicting creep of concrete is elaborated. This new model considers the effect of admixtures, specifically the silica fume, in predicting concrete creep and allows an accurate prediction of this phenomenon. The proposed model is based on the observation of physical behavior of creep phenomenon. It targets at expressing creep compliance in terms of structural and environmental parameters. In fact, the experimental observations show that creep curves follow two kinetic regimes leading to a model called Phenomenological Creep Model. By adequate regressions and substitutions, and according to this model, we can express creep compliance in terms of structural, environmental parameters and admixture types and percentage. The proposed new Phenomenological Creep Model Silica Fume (PCM19SF) calculates accurately creep of concrete by considering the effect of silica fume.