Contribution à l'étude du frottement d'un béton autoplaçant contre une surface métallique (application aux poussées contre les coffrages)

The main objective of this thesis is to investigate the friction of fresh concrete with metallic formwork. A specially designed tribometer was developed to investigate such friction and was adapted for various types of concrete mixtures. The originality of this work lies mainly in the fact that it concerns a commonly used material for wich the friction against the forming surface has not been sufficiently investigated. A new approach is used in this study to predict the lateral pressure induced by the fresh concrete pressure. A particular interest is the formwork pressure exerted by highly flowable concrete, or self-compacting concrete. When the concrete is cast into place, a limit interface layer reduces the frictional stresses with the formwork material. When the pressure applied on the concrete is greater than a certain critical pressure, some of the cement particles and fines come into direct contact with the formwork material, and the concrete begins to follow a granular comportment. This leads to greater increase in friction stress which varies with the flow velocity between the rising fresh concrete and formwork material. When a demoulding agent is applied at the interface, the friction stress depends mainly on the physico-chimical characteristics of the resulting film of paste at the interface. In certain cases, these agents can maintain the integrity of the limit layer near the wall surface. This allows, during the flow of the plastic concrete, to reduce the friction at the wall compared to similar situation where a demoulding agent is not used. Well established models used for silos were used to predict the formwork pressure exerted by fresh concrete. Similary between the evolution of concrete pressure and ensiled granular mediums one was observed on site, though the strains are different. From these observations, several models derived from Janssen's model, have been proposed. The model adapted in the case of fresh concrete allows the prediction with satisfaction formwork pressure. This study can therefore enable the used of the designed tribometer to test a variety of material and placement parameters to predict formwork pressure instead of large-scale and often expensive field testsBETHUNE-BU Sci. appli. et éco. (621192101) / SudocSudocFranceF