Prediction of Coupled Heat and Moisture Transfer in Early-Age Massive Concrete Structures

The issues connected with the determination of thermal and moisture fields in early-age massive concrete are discussed here. The coupled equations, which govern the heat and mass transfer in early-age mass concrete as well as the initial and boundary conditions are presented. Next, the discretization in the space was made using the finite element method; the finite difference method was introduced for the discretization in time. As a result, the matrix form of the heat and moisture transfer equations was obtained. The proposed model was implemented in the original computer program TEMWIL, which can be applied to spatial massive structures in order to forecast the temperature and moisture distribution. Essential thermodiffusion coefficients for early-age concrete were also discussed. Finally, some computations concerning different curing conditions for the massive foundation slab were presented.