Effect of early age drying shrinkage on the seismic response of RC structures

Abstract

Reinforced Concrete (RC) structures get damaged over time due to many factors: thermal conditions, chemical attacks, shrinkage, creep, carbonation, corrosion, etc. This damaging process starts at early-age and continues with structure aging. Early age damage can have a significant impact on the dynamic behavior of reinforced concrete structures. In fact, the natural frequency of a structure, which is a design parameter can be highly reduced due to this damage. In order to quantify the impact of early-age damage (0 to 28 days) on the seismic response of a reinforced concrete structure, this thesis combined both numerical modeling and pseudo-dynamic tests on two types of RC portal frames. The first one was kept in endogenous conditions (water exchange with the surrounding environment was prevented) during its early age period in a way to limit drying effects leading to cracks. As for the second one, it was kept in non-endogenous conditions (possibility of water exchange with the surrounding environment) similar to construction site conditions, which induced an initial damage (cracks apparition) due to a more important drying shrinkage. Both types of RC portal frames were subjected after their early age period to the same seismic loading using pseudodynamic tests. On the one hand, this manuscript presents the experimental results obtained through the use of pseudodynamic tests in order to evaluate the behavior of the two types of RC structures under a moderate intensity earthquake. The structures were instrumented using optical fiber sensors, displacement and load sensors, velocimeters and monitored using Digital Image Correlation. On the other hand, the enhanced multifiber beam model that was developed for the portal frames in order to follow their early age damage and to determine their static and dynamic behavior while accounting for their early age effects is presented. In this numerical model, shrinkage and concrete thermal deformations are calculated and then introduced as inputs of a coupled damage model accounting for creep and mechanical deformations. Such model was validated by comparing its results to the ones obtained experimentally, which made it possible to evaluate the evolution of frequency content of the two types of structures during early age and to quantify their difference of behavior in the non-linear domain. Work conducted within this thesis thus allowed proposing a complete model for reinforced concrete structures that can be used in order to follow their damage evolution from casting until being subjected to a seismic load and to quantify their seismic vulnerability.