Rate-type creep law of aging concrete based on maxwell chain

It is shown that the linear creep law of concrete can be characterized, with any desired accuracy, by a rate-type creep law that can be interpreted by a Maxwell chain model of time-variable viscosities and spring moduli. Identification of these parameters from the test data is accomplished by expanding into Direchlet series the relaxation curves, which in turn are computed from the measured creep curves. The identification has a unique solution if a certain smoothing condition is imposed upon the relaxation spectra. The formulation is useful for the step-by-step time integration of large finite element systems because it makes the storage of stress history unnecessary. For this purpose a new, unconditionally stable numerical algorithm is presented, allowing an arbitrary increase of the time step as the creep rate decays. The rate-type formulation permits establishing a correlation with the rate processes in the microstructure and thus opens the way toward rational generations to variable tempeature and water content. The previously developed Kelvin-type chain also permits such a correlation, but its identification from test data is more complicated.