ABSTRACT
Liquid concrete has a certain fluidity before solidification. When pouring into the mold, liquid concrete causes some lateral pressure on the mold formwork, which can fix the mobility of fresh liquid, under the combination of pouring effect, concrete self-weight and vibration. The safety of mold formwork is very important to piers construction. Higher concrete pier needs more concrete than lower one. More liquid concrete is always poured at a time, which always induces the bigger lateral pressure. The structure of the mold formwork is always complex and cannot be analyzed theoretically, so finite element method (FEM) analysis may seem to be the only way to solve this problem. An example of high concrete piers in a crossing-sea bridge is conducted to analyze the mechanical behavior of the mold formwork under the effects of self-weight and lateral pressure, using plate elements and beam elements of FEM software. Some meaningful conclusions were drawn.
