3D electrothermal analysis of electrically conductive concrete slabs: Finite element (FE) method

The investigation of electrically conductive concrete as a new generation building material has gathered great attention from researchers. The broadest aspect of the produc-tion and research purposes of conductive concrete is heatable slabs. However, experi-mental electrothermal tests of this type of building materials are costly in terms of la-bor and production and involve time-consuming processes. In this study, electrother-mal analyzes were carried out using the Abaqus program to investigate the effect of the cross-sectional geometry between the electrodes on the thermal performance. The aim was to estimate a suitable cross-section geometry with low cost and time. In the analysis, applicable sections with 6 different geometries and a width of one meter were preferred. Concrete properties were obtained from the author's previous experimental studies. A potential difference of 24 V was defined in all models throughout the simu-lation period. According to the electrothermal analysis results, the increase in total volume caused the resulting temperature and heat energy to increase. The analysis demonstrated that optimizing the cross-sectional area of the models led to improved temperature distribution and heat energy efficiency while achieving significant concrete volume savings, highlighting the potential for more sustainable design approaches.