RILEM International Symposium on Concrete Modelling,

12-14 October 2014, Beijing, China

MODELLING SHRINKAGE AND THERMAL DEFORMATIONS IN

HIGH PERFORMANCE CONCRETE AT EARLY AGE
Mateusz Wyrzykowski (1,2), Dariusz Gawin (2), Pietro Lura (1,3)

(1) Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Switzerland
(2) Department of Building Physics and Building Materials, Lodz University of Technology,
Poland
(3) Institute for Building Materials, ETH Zurich, Switzerland

Abstract
High Performance Concrete (HPC) undergoes a decrease in the internal relative humidity
(RH) both due to self-desiccation and drying. The resulting shrinkage can lead to micro- or
macro-cracking already at early stages of hardening. At the same time, an increase of
temperature occurs in the concrete elements due to release of heat of hydration (self-heating),
which leads to the buildup of thermal stresses and possibly to cracking. It has been shown that
the thermal expansion coefficient (CTE), a key factor in terms of thermal stresses buildup, is
coupled with the evolution of the hygral state of the concrete, especially for HPC with low
water-to-cement ratio and fine pore structure. Since the CTE increases considerably with the
decrease of the internal RH, thermal and hygral strains need to be considered together while
assessing the deformations of the concrete. In this work we use a poromechanical model for
the description of the coupled evolution of the hygral state, governed both by self-desiccation
and drying, and the thermal state, governed by the evolution of the hydration process. At the
same time, the effect of internal curing, which reduces both the hygral and the thermal
deformations, is introduced into the model.

1. INTRODUCTION
High Performance Concrete (HPC) is a modern building material with superior
properties, in particular, high strength and elastic modulus, low permeability, fine surface
finishing, good durability. At the same time, HPC requires special attention due to its early
age deformations and the resulting sensitivity to cracking. There are two major causes of early
age cracking of HPC: autogenous shrinkage and thermal deformations. Autogenous shrinkage
results from the decrease of internal relative humidity (RH) in pores, a phenomenon referred
to as self-desiccation [1]. Self-desiccation results from the decrease of total volume of the
hydration products respect to the volume of dry cement plus water. As the pores within the
cement paste become partially empty because water is consumed by cement hydration,
capillary menisci are formed. With menisci moving to smaller and smaller pores as hydration
proceeds, the capillary pressures build up and induce a contraction on the solid skeleton,

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manifesting as autogenous shrinkage. Since self-desiccation is being driven by the hydration

process, the decrease of internal RH takes place in HPC even if material is not opened to
external drying. Moreover, self-desiccation may proceed even if the material is water-cured.
In this case, water curing turns out to be inefficient due to very low permeability of HPC. In
order to provide curing water in HPC with low water-to-cement ratio (w/c), the internal curing
method has been developed, which is based on introducing into the concrete small water
reservoirs that release water upon hydration [2]. The reservoir can be obtained by adding
presaturated lightweight aggregates (LWA) or dry superabsorbent polymers (SAP) that absorb
water during mixing [2]. Internal curing water compensates the volume emptied due to
chemical shrinkage and therefore allows limiting or even eliminating the self-desiccation.
Another cause of early-age cracks in HPC is related to evolution of temperature due to
self-heating of concrete. This phenomenon is due to the exothermic nature of the hydration
reaction. As the temperature initially increases, the concrete expands. At the same time, heat
exchange with environment takes place through the surfaces of the element. If the ambient
temperature is lower than that of the self-heating concrete, contraction will take place at
cooling, which will cause the build-up of thermal stresses and the risk of thermal cracking
because of external restraint and self-restraint. The risk of thermal cracking depends on the
structural factors like element geometry and degree of restraint, concrete material properties
and environmental conditions. The higher the temperature difference between the self-heating
concrete and the environment, the higher the temperature gradients and the thermal stresses.
Due to high amounts of cement in HPC, the temperature increase due to hydration and
therefore the temperature gradient in the concrete section may be high even in elements that at
first sight appear to be rather slender than massive, see [3]. The thermal stresses will further
depend on the thermal deformability of concrete, usually expressed by the thermal expansion
coefficient (CTE). It has been reported, that the CTE increases in concrete or mortar as the
internal RH decreases [4]. The mechanisms of the CTE dependence upon the moisture state
(internal RH) have been described in detail in [4, 5]. The CTE increase will accompany the
RH decrease not only due to external drying, but also due to self-desiccation. Hence, HPC
that undergoes self-desiccation will contract not only due to the resulting autogenous
shrinkage, but also the thermal deformations will be amplified by the increasing CTE. This
shows that by controlling the common risk factor, i.e., self-desiccation, one can at the same
time decrease the risk of both autogenous shrinkage and thermal cracking. Recently, it has
been shown that internal curing with SAP [6] can limit both the autogenous shrinkage and
CTE increase, the latter leading to lower thermal deformations.
In this work we analysed the deformations in HPC resulting both from decrease of RH
(autogenous and drying shrinkage) and temperature changes. For this purpose we use a
poromechanical model proposed by Gawin et al. [7] and recently extended by Wyrzykowski
et al. [8] for describing internal curing. The simulations performed with the model describe
the moisture and heat transfer in concrete columns of 30×40 cm2 cross-section. The
performance of two types of concrete is compared – the reference HPC with w/c of 0.30 and
the HPC with addition of SAP.

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2. NUMERICAL MODEL

2.1 Description of mass and heat transfer

The model has been described in detail in [7]; here only short description is provided for
the sake of brevity. The poromechanical approach assumes that concrete is a multiphase
porous body with the pores partially filled with gas (a mixture of dry air and water vapour)
and liquid (capillary and bound water). The governing equations of the model (obtained at the
macroscopic scale by volume averaging of the local mass, energy and linear momentum
equations) are: two continuity equations for mass conservation of water species and dry air,
both involving the solid skeleton mass balance, the enthalpy conservation equation and the
linear momentum balance equation. These equations are written in terms of the following
variables: gas pressure pg, capillary pressure pc, temperature T, displacement vector u and the
hydration degree α as evolution variable. RH is calculated from pc using the Kelvin-Laplace
equation.
To discuss the phenomena related to water loss (due to self-desiccation and/or drying) or
water gain (due to curing), the mass conservation equation for water species will be discussed.
The equation involves the mass conservation of the solid skeleton in order to eliminate the
term due to the porosity change [7]:
p c   gw T 

n  w   gw  S  
  gw
1  n 1  S   1  n   n  w

S
T
 1  S n  
p c t t  T t 
s s w w

  p gw    (1)
M M kk rg

 div   g a 2 w D dgw grad  g   div   gw g  grad p g   
 Mg  p    
   gw w
kk rw
 
 div   w w  grad p g  grad p c   s 1  S m hydr  s Sm hydr  m hydr  m IC
    

where the indices g, w, gw, s refer to gaseous phase, liquid water, water vapour, solid phase,
respectively, t is time, n is porosity, S is saturation degree of pores with liquid water (both
capillary and physically adsorbed), ρ is density and p is pressure. The first term on the left-
hand side of the eq. (1) describes the change of water mass. The next two terms describe the
effect of temperature change, with β being the thermal expansion coefficient. The remaining
terms on the left-hand side describe the fluxes, with M being the molar mass and Ddgw the
effective diffusivity, k - the intrinsic permeability (assuming isotropy of the medium), kr - the
relative permeability, and μ - the dynamic viscosity. The right-hand side of eq. (1) describes
the source terms, where the two first terms are the changes of moisture mass due to the
decrease of pores volume caused by the build-up of hydration products, the third term is the
actual sink due to the mass of water consumed by hydrating cement ṁhydr and the last term,
ṁIC describes the source due to internal curing, see [8]. The most important parameter in terms
of transport efficiency of water at the saturation levels encountered during internal curing is
the effective permeability k∙krw appearing in the generalized Darcy’s term for liquid water.
The relative permeability for water may be expressed as a function of the saturation degree of
pores with water [7]. For describing the evolution of the intrinsic permeability, the General
Effective Media theory [9], which accounts for the depercolation of capillary porosity, was
applied in [10] and also here.
A decrease of the internal RH can be caused by the hydration process and, if the material
is open to the environment, by drying. The first process results naturally from the

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aforementioned sink term due to hydration. This can be easily seen if one virtually removes
all transport terms and assumes isothermal conditions in eq. (1); the only terms remaining will
be the first term describing the change of water content and the terms on the right hand side of
the equation governed by the water consumption and the corresponding reduction of porosity.
In the model applied here, hydration is described using the affinity approach by Ulm and
Coussy [11], with parameters of the model calibrated based on isothermal calorimetry data. In
order to simulate the external drying process, appropriate boundary conditions need to be
defined, with convective mass exchange, and the transport terms will govern the distribution
of the capillary pressure, and therefore also the internal RH. When a decrease of internal RH
is considered, its influence on the hydration rate needs to be accounted for. The coupling
between the hydration process and the internal RH is taken into account in the model by
means of an empirical formulation [12].
A further equation that needs to be analysed here is the heat balance equation for the
multiphase porous medium [7]:
T
C  kk rw

  w C pw w  grad p g  grad p c grad T  
t 
p eff
(2)

 grad p grad T  div  grad T   m vap H vap  m hydr H hydr

rg
kk
  g C pg g

g
eff

where (ρCp)eff is the effective heat capacity obtained by volume averaging of different phases.
Eq. (2) considers heat conduction (described with Fourier’s law), with λeff accounting for the
saturation degree of pores with liquid water, for details see [7]. In addition, also advective
heat transfer together with liquid water and gas flow is considered. The terms on the right side
of eq. (2) describe the heat sink due to water evaporation, m vap H vap , and the heat source due
 hydrH hydr .
to hydration reaction, m

2.2 Description of deformations

In this paper, the focus is on the shrinkage and thermal deformations only. The shrinkage
due to RH decrease is described as a function of pc according to [13, 14]:
Sp c 1 1 
 sh     (3)
3  K Ks 

where K and Ks are bulk moduli of the porous body and of the solid skeleton, respectively. In
this equation, the saturation degree S is used as an approximation of the so-called Bishop
parameter representing the contact area through which the pressure is exerted by the pore
fluids on the solid skeleton. If the saturation degree is used that approximates the contact area
of the pores of the cement paste through which the pressures act on the skeleton, the predicted
deformations will refer to the cement paste only. Therefore, the presence of non-shrinking
aggregates needs to be separately accounted for. Here, we applied Hobbs’ model for this
purpose [15], see also [6]. It needs to be noted that eq. (3) (or equivalent equations) gives only
an approximate value for the elastic shrinkage, with increasing underestimation of actual
shrinkage deformations at decreasing saturation degrees. Different approaches focusing both
on refining the description of the Bishop parameter [16], bulk moduli [13], or acting forces
[17] have been proposed to account for the underestimated shrinkage strains. Another
argument was the presence of creep accompanying shrinkage deformations as an answer to

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the action of the capillary pressure [7, 18]. Additional deformation due to creep could in fact
explain the part of the shrinkage deformations underestimated by eq. (2) or other models [13,
17]. However, modelling of creep occurring due to the hydrostatic action of capillary pressure,
a stress state completely different than obtained by axial loading used for calibrating empirical
creep models, has proven to be a very complex task [18]. Here, in order to avoid fitting of
empirical model parameters, we choose to neglect the creep strains. Thermal deformations are
described as:
 th   s T (4)

where βs is the CTE, the latter parameter being a function of internal RH obtained based on
experimental data [5]. The total deformation that, upon restraint, will produce stresses and
may induce cracking is thus a sum of the strains expressed with eqs. (3) and (4):
 tot   sh   th (5)

2.3 Modelling of internal curing

In internal curing, the curing water must be promptly released by the water reservoirs
and distributed fast and possibly uniformly in the self-desiccating cement paste [2]. As shown
by some experimental studies, e.g. [19] and numerical modelling [10] this can be obtained
with the reservoirs used in practice, in particular with SAP or LWA with coarse porosity.
Based on the assumption of uniform availability of curing water, we can use a volume-
averaged source term in eq. (1). This term describes the mass of curing water provided per
unit volume of concrete and is a function of the capillary pressure, which is the main driving
force for water suction from the reservoirs and for its distribution into the self-desiccating
regions of cement paste [8]:
 S p c
IC

m IC  w c (6)
1  p t

where η is the volume ratio of internal curing water per unit volume of concrete and SIC is the
saturation degree of internal reservoirs with water. The latter characteristic is described as a
function of capillary pressure based on sorption isotherms of SAP [8].

3. SIMULATION RESULS AND DISCUSSION

The model as presented in section 2 was used for simulations of hydration and drying in
the cross-section of HPC columns of dimensions 0.3×0.4 m2. Two HPC types were analyzed:
a reference concrete with w/c 0.30, and concrete with internal curing and additional (entrained)
water corresponding to a w/ce of 0.05. The volume of additional water appears in eq. (1) as a
source term defined by eq. (6), with its parameters determined in [8]. Other parameters
governing hydration degree evolution and sorption isotherms were determined based on the
experimental data [8]. Mechanical properties were obtained experimentally on the cement
pastes and estimated for the assumed volume fraction of aggregates based on Hobbs model,
similarly as in [6]. Concrete with 60% by volume of aggregates was assumed, with the CTE
of the aggregates estimated as 9 μm/m/°C [5]. In the simulations, one-fourth of the column’s
cross-section was described with a mesh composed of 192 rectangular 8-node finite elements.
The boundary conditions corresponded to sealed curing during the first 7 days after casting

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and further opening to drying (removal of formworks), with 60% ambient RH and mass
transfer coefficient defined on the surfaces of the column as 0.0005 m/s.

a b
Figure 1: Distributions of a) RH at the age of 28 days, and b) temperature at 0.5 days from
setting or the time instant of the highest gradient (1/4 of cross-section of dimensions 0.15×0.2
m2) for the reference concrete with w/c 0.30.

In Fig. 1a the distribution of RH in the section at 28 day from casting is presented in

reference concrete and in Fig. 1b the distribution of temperature at time instant of the highest
gradient in the section (approximately 0.5 days from setting). In Fig. 2a, the evolution of the
internal RH at different depths along the symmetry axis of the cross-section (in the direction
of the 0.3 m side) is presented.
1 50
SAP SAP
0.95
center -50 center
1cm
Shrinkage strains [μm/m]

0.9 reference 1cm

reference 3cm
2cm 3cm -150 2cm
0.85
center
RH [-]

0.8 -250
center
8cm
0.75 8cm -350
0.7 5cm 2cm 5cm
-450
0.65 2cm 1cm
1cm
0.6 -550
0 1 10 100 0 1 10 100
a Time [days] b Time [days]

Figure 2: Evolution of a) RH, b) shrinkage strains in two analyzed HPC (reference and with
SAP) at different depths from the surface. The dashed vertical line indicates the start of drying.

As can be seen in Fig. 2a, internal curing with SAP allows maintaining high levels of RH
during the initial days of hardening in sealed conditions. When the element is opened to
drying at the age of 7 days, the initially higher RH allows offsetting the progression of the
drying front in the element and therefore reaching higher hydration degrees. The drying front
is much sharper and at the age of 1 year reaches only approximately 2-3 cm in the case of
HPC with SAP. An additional, beneficial effect of the higher RH in concrete with SAP is the
CTE reduction, see Fig. 3. In Fig. 2b, the evolution of shrinkage strains at different depths
along the symmetry axis modelled with eq. (3) is presented for the two concretes. The lower
shrinkage strains in concrete with SAP are the direct effect of maintaining higher RH, Fig. 2a.

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For simulations of thermal deformations, an appropriate function describing the

evolution of the CTE was necessary. It was obtained as function of internal RH based on the
data on cement pastes [5], and estimated for concrete with Hobbs’ model [15], similarly as for
shrinkage deformations, see also [6].

26 200
reference
180 center
24 cement paste
160 surface

Thermal strains [μm/m]

22
140
CTE [μm/m/°C]

20 120
18 100
SAP
16
experimental 80

simulations 60
14
40
12 simulations concrete 20
10 0
1 0.98 0.96 0.94 0.92 0.9 0 1 2 3
a RH [-] b Time [days]

Figure 3: Evolution of a) CTE in cement paste approximated based on experimental data [5]
and of HPC estimated with Hobbs’ model [15], b) thermal strains in the center and on the
surface of reference HPC and HPC with SAP.

The resulting CTE as a function of RH is presented in Fig. 3a for the RH ranges

occurring in the reference concrete due to self-desiccation. In Fig. 3b, the evolution of the
thermal strains in the center and at the surface of the cross-section for the two concretes is
presented. Due to the lower CTE maintained thanks to high RH (see [5, 6]), thermal gradients
can be slightly reduced. In the analyzed case, the effect was however limited since the
temperature decreased already before the effect of reduced RH on the increase of the CTE
could be observed. Nevertheless, in the common case of earlier start of drying (e.g. formwork
removal after 1-3 days), the risk of excessive thermal deformations affected by RH decrease
should be considered. In addition to reduced temperature gradients, our results also show
reduced global thermal deformation that could also limit the risk of cracking when concrete
contracts upon cooling

4. CONCLUSIONS
A poromechanical model has been presented with the focus on describing the hygro-
thermal aspects of the hydration process and drying and the resulting autogenous and drying
shrinkage and thermal deformations in HPC. Recent developments of the model regard
assuming a dependence of the CTE upon moisture state (internal RH). The model is also
capable of describing the effect of internal curing on self-desiccation, shrinkage and thermal
deformations. The model was applied for simulating HPC columns during hardening, with
and without internal curing. The numerical results indicate that internal curing may allow not
only for reducing autogenous shrinkage, but also thermal deformations and therefore
minimize the risk of early age cracking in HPC.

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