APPLICATION OF THE PARTICLE SWARM OPTIMIZATION TO THE INVERSE THERMAL ANALYSIS FOR THE MASS CONCRETE STRUCTURES

Abstract

Controlling thermal cracking caused by the heat of hydration of cement in the massive concrete structure is necessary to predict the distribution of temperature in the concrete structure. Numerical methods such as FEM have been applied on thermal prediction problem. However, the input data of thermal properties, such as the thermal conductivity of concrete has a direct influence on the precision of analysis. It is not always able to get reliable thermal properties in the field. In order to predict temperature distributions accurately, adequate modeling and precise thermal properties are necessary. The object of this paper is to estimate thermal properties of concrete using the Particle Swarm Optimization and FEM.