Assessment on the Thermal Stresses of Concrete Bridge Piers under Solar Radiation

Abstract:

The time-varying thermal stresses of a concrete pier are actively studied in this study with the aiding of the commercial package ANSYS. Thermal boundary conditions are utilized to obtain the temperature distribution of the concrete bridge pier. The surface temperature of the pier is measured by using a thermal infrared imager at different time instants. The different boundary conditions are applied to determine the structural temperature distribution and compute the thermal deformation. The made observations demonstrate that the horizontal deformation is much larger than that in vertical deformation due to the influence of the constraints on the top and bottom sides of the pier. The thermal stresses of the example bridge pier are not very large except for the local areas on top of the piers. It is seen that the numerical models can successfully predict the structural time-varying temperature effects

• Periodical: Applied Mechanics and Materials (Volumes 204-208)
• Pages: 2045-2050
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMM.204-208.2045
• Online since: October 2012
• Authors: Pei Song Gong*, Bo Chen, Chun Fang Song, Xiu Li Li
• Keywords: Bridge Pier, Heat Transfer Analysis, Temperature Distribution, Thermal Stress

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