Analysis of coupled transport phenomena in concrete at elevated temperatures

Abstract

In this paper, we study a non-linear numerical scheme arising from the implicit time discretization of the Ba\v{z}ant-Thonguthai model for hygro-thermal behavior of concrete at high temperatures. Existence and uniqueness of the time-discrete solution in two dimensions is established using the theory of pseudomonotone operators in Banach spaces. Next, the spatial discretization is accomplished by the conforming finite element method. An illustrative numerical example shows that the numerical model reproduces well the rapid increase of pore pressure in wet concrete due to extreme heating. Such phenomenon is of particular interest for the safety assessment of concrete structures prone to thermally-induced spalling.