Customization of a software of finite elements to analysis of concrete structures: long-term effects

Concrete is a material that presents time-delayed effects associated with creep and shrinkage phenomena. The numerical modeling of the creep is not trivial because it depends on the age of the concrete at the time of loading, which makes necessary to store the history of loads to apply the principle of superposition. However, a problem formulated in finite elements has many points of integration, making this storage impossible. The Theory of Solidification, together with incremental algorithm developed by Bazant e Prasannan ([1], [2]), solves this problem. Therefore, this paper presents the adaptation of this algorithm to a finite element commercial software (ANSYS) considering the creep, according to the CEB-FIP Model Code 1990 [3]. The results demonstrate that the deformations provided by this adaptation are in accordance with the analytical solution given by the CEB-FIP MC90, including cases where the loads are applied at different ages of the concrete.