New Open Access publication released

A new publication titled "A Multiscale Model for Predicting the Young’s Modulus and the Thermal-Expansion Coefficient of Concrete at High Temperatures” by Simon Peters, Giao Vu, Günther Meschke has been released in the journal Construction and Building Materials by Elsevier.

Abstract:
A semi-analytical micromechanical model is proposed to predict the evolution of the Young’s modulus and thermal-expansion coefficient of concrete at elevated temperatures, considering three scales of observation, namely cement paste, mortar and concrete. After validation with various experimental data sets, the model quantifies different sources of damage to concrete at elevated temperatures, indicating that the chemical decomposition of cement paste has a minor influence on the evolution of the Young’s modulus, while the thermal degradation of the aggregate plays a major role. At higher temperatures, cracking is the main mechanism driving the reduction of the Young’s modulus of the investigated concretes.

With regard to the thermal-expansion coefficient evaluated at multiple scales, load-induced thermal strains highly effect the homogenized total strains at the mortar level. Moreover, it is demonstrated that the dehydration degree of C-S-H increases proportionally with the measured load-induced thermal strains.

You can read the full paper as open access publication here:

https://authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S0950-0618(25)01407-2