ELASTICITY OF CONCRETE

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• To calculate the deformation and deflection of structural members, we have to know the
relation between stress and strain. The relation between stress and strain is of vital
interest over the full range, in structural design. Like many other structural materials,
concrete is, to a certain degree, elastic. A material is said to be perfectly elastic if strain
appears and disappears immediately on application and removal of load .This doesn’t
imply a linear stress-strain relation.

• Concrete behaves nearly elastically when load is first applied. However under sustained
loading, concrete exhibits creep i.e. strain increases with time under a constant stress,
even at very low stresses and under normal environmental conditions of temperature and
humidity. Steel on the other hand, creeps only at very high stresses at normal temperature
or even at low stresses at very high temperature, and in both cases a time dependent
failure occurs

• In contrast, in concrete subjected to a stress below about 60-70 % of short-term strength,

there is no creep rupture or static fatigue. Like concrete, timber also creeps under normal
environmental conditions.The importance of creep in structural concrete lies mainly in
the fact that creep deformation is of the same order as the elastic deformation. There are
also other effects of creep, most of them detrimental but some beneficial.

ELASTLCITY
• Let us first categorize the elastic behavior of concrete in terms of various types of elastic
behavior of engineering materials. The definition of pure elasticity is that strain appears
and disappears immediately on application and removal of load. The stress-strain curve in
the figure below illustrates two categories of pure elasticity:

o ● Case (a) linear and elastic and

o ● Case (b) non-linear and elastic.

• Steel conforms approximately to case (a) whilst some plastics and timber follow case (b).
 • Brittle materials such as glass and most rocks are described as linear and non-elastic,
non case
(c) because separate linear curve exists for the loading and unloading branches of the
stress-strain
strain diagram and a permanent deformatio
deformationn exists after complete removal of load.

• The fourth category, case (d) can be described as non

non-linear and non-elastic,
elastic, a permanent
deformation exist after removal of load. The area enclosed by the loading and unloading
curves represents the hysteresis. Th
This
is behaviour is typical of concrete in compression or
tension loaded to moderate and high stresses but is not very pronounced at very low
stresses.

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