The Effects of Seasonal Thermal Stresses at Concrete Buildings in the Arabic Area
Abstract
Investigating fluctuation in thermal loads is essential to understand the imposed deformations and stresses within structural elements. These deformations and stresses must be within the allowable limits to avoid structural failure or serviceability defects. The shrinkage and creep of the concrete impose additional stresses on all concrete elements. These effects will be obvious at long slabs with a length of more than 60m. In this paper I shall try to present the different values of thermal stresses at the single storey and multi-storey buildings considering the effects of column heights, support conditions and slab thickness to provide a clear understanding for structural engineers about imposed thermal stresses and the most critical values which require additional reinforcement to avoid thermal cracks within the building slabs