Thermal cracking resistance of stacking concrete blocks

Abstract

In massive concrete structures there is a danger of temperature cracks. One of the measures to get rid of these type of cracks is the breakdown of an array into concreting blocks. In this paper, we consider the provision of thermal crack resistance of a massive concrete structure during the construction period. A comparative analysis of the thermally stressed state of the structure erected by one and two blocks in height is carried out. The influence of the overlap intervals of the concrete block in the calculations of thermal crack resistance was evaluated. Thermal crack resistance is evaluated by the deformation criterion. The authors found that the breakdown of the concrete structure into concreting blocks reduces the elongation deformations by 37%. The results show that increasing the overlap interval of a concrete block more effectively ensures thermal crack resistance of the structure.