Simulation-based investigation for heat transfer behavior of steel reinforcements in concrete machine frames and their thermal effects

The determination of the thermal-elastic behavior is one of the main aspects in the design phase of new machine frames. Prototypically simulation models are used for preliminary investigations, which are based on finite element approaches and usually work with simplified material laws. By the manufacturing of machine frames of concrete steel reinforcements are used to ensure the operation reliability due to the high sensitivity of concrete to tensile stresses. Because of different thermal conductivity and specific heat capacity of steel and concrete the reinforcement has a not negligible influence on the total thermal behavior of the system, which cannot be covered with conventional material laws, e.g. from material libraries. Preliminary investigations show, that a volume fraction more than 1 % of the reinforcement of the total volume can cause a relative error up to ten percent in the temperature field. To reflect the real behavior of reinforced concrete for a machine bed, the influence should be exanimated for two different approaches. Next to the real illustration of the geometry of the reinforcement in the FE-model, decoupled simulation approaches are used on reduced models, which should approach numerically the material behavior of the reinforcement.