Age Dependent Behaviors of Composite Girders Subjected to Concrete Shrinkage and Creep

An incremental approach to predict the time dependent flexural behavior of composite girder is presented in the framework of incremental finite element method. Age dependent nature of creep, shrinkage, and maturing of elastic modulus of concrete is prescribed in the incremental tangent description of constitutive relation derived based on the first order Taylor series expansion applying to the total from of stress-strain relation. The loop phenomenon in which age dependent nature of concrete causes stress redistribution and it causes creep in turn is taken into account in the formulation through the incremental representation of constitutive relation. The developed algorithm predicts the time dependent deflections of 4.8m long two span double composite box girder subjected to shrinkage, maturing of elastic modulus, and creep initially induced by self weight. Comparison shows a good agreement between the predicted and measured results.