Research on temperature action and cracking risk of steel–concrete composite girder during the hydration process

Abstract

Temperature changes due to hydration heat often cause cracks in the early-age concrete deck of steel–concrete composite girder bridges, even before opening to traffic. However, no available methods are provided in current specifications for the thermal effect calculation. To fill this gap, large-scale temperature measurements and fine finite-element model (FEM) analysis were performed on an actual composite girder bridge. Based on the fully validated FEM, a comprehensive parametric study was carried out to establish the spatio-temporal pattern of hydration-caused temperature, including a vertical pattern and an evolutionary pattern. Finally, a simplified method was presented for the thermal stress calculation of composite girders, and a case study was also provided. Measurements showed that temperature differences of concrete deck varied below 5 °C, much smaller than the entire composite section. FEM analysis then suggested that the influence of solar radiation can be basically ignored compared with hydration heat. The spatio-temporal pattern in the form of the coefficient of temperature rise was proposed based on the above findings and parametric study, and the reliability was properly verified with experimental or FEM results. For the final simplified method, the case study demonstrated that it can effectively facilitate the thermal stress calculation of composite girders during hydration process by adopting the proposed spatio-temporal pattern. As such, preliminary curing schemes can be easily selected to control the concrete cracking risk before casting.