Introduction of the problem under consideration. Wear causes of the refractory brickwork in the blast-furnace hearth. Cracking of carbon bricks. Development approaches for extending the life of blast-furnace hearth brickwork by use of the finite element method. Comparison of the thermal-mechanical behaviour of normal, microporous and graphitiferous carbon brick grades under similar kinematic and thermal boundary conditions. Effect of the design on the type of possible brick damage. Effect of the material physical properties. Computation accuracy of finite element solutions. Conclusions.