ESTIMATION OF THERMAL CRACK RESISTANCE FOR MASS CONCRETE STRUCTURES WITH UNCERTAIN MATERIAL PROPERTIES

This paper presents an analytical method to predict the probability of thermal cracking for mass concrete structures. This method takes into account variations in materials, such as differences in thermal or mechanical properties, or changes in environmental conditions, such as the ambient temperature. Variations in the thermal stresses for structures with uncertain material properties were approximated using data from a sensitivity analysis and the first-order approximation theory based on Taylor expansion. With these results, the authors propose a method to calculate the thermal cracking probability based on the stress-resistance model. Numerical examples are used to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed method. Sensitivities of thermal cracking to specific material properties are presented.