| Summary: | Changes of environmental temperature and humidity affect the elastic modulus of concrete, which makes the vibration-based bridge health monitoring method unreliable. This research studied the effects of environmental temperature and moisture content on the effective elastic modulus of concrete by the mesomechanics methods. In meso level, for the two components of concrete, pores and micro cracks, effects of water in them on the effective elastic modulus at different temperatures were studied separately. Then estimations of the effective elastic moduli at different temperatures and moisture contents were proposed. To verify this, the calculated effective elastic moduli were compared with the experimental values. Finally, the mechanism of the variations of the effective elastic moduli with temperature was revealed. The proposed estimations of the effective elastic modulus can offer a simple and reliable approach to obtain the accurate elastic modulus of concrete based on the environmental temperature and concrete moisture content, which can eliminate their effects in bridge health monitoring.
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