Shrinkage analysis of reinforced concrete floors using shrinkage-adjusted elasticity modulus

The shrinkage of large reinforced concrete floors often gives rise to cracking problems. To identify the problematic areas, shrinkage movement analysis is often carried out by finite element method with proper creep and shrinkage models using step-by-step time integration. However as the full stress history prior to the time interval considered is necessary, with the increase in the number of time intervals used, the amount of computations increases dramatically. Therefore a new method using the shrinkage-adjusted elasticity modulus (SAEM) is introduced so that analysis can be carried out using one single step. Examples are presented to demonstrate its usefulness.