This paper presents the development and application of a nonlinear model for predicting the creep of early age concrete under compressive loadings, a critical factor in the design and long- term performance of concrete structures in the nuclear industry. The…
This paper presents the development and application of a nonlinear model for predicting the creep of early age concrete under compressive loadings, a critical factor in the design and long- term performance of concrete structures in the nuclear industry. The model, inspired by previous work, incorporates an aging function to account for the decrease in creep compliance due to concrete aging, explained by the solidification theory. In this model, the non-aging viscoelastic strain is ap- proximated using six Kelvin chains and an initial nano-porous pressure is considered for early age concrete, adjusted based on the degree of hydration. The model is calibrated using short-term creep tests performed on VeRCoRs concrete at different ages and demonstrates a good match between the experimental data and the numerical simulations. The model is further extended to predict the re- sponse of VeRCoRsconcretesubjectedtodryingcreeptestsat20oC and40oC. Thedevelopedmodel offers a comprehensive framework for predicting creep behavior in early age concrete as well as creep of mature concrete at different environment conditions.