Abstract: In fires, determination of the temperature field of reinforced concret
e members is not only a basis for analyzing mechanical properties of the members at high temperature, but also a basis of constituting rehabilitation schemes of the structures after fires. In this paper, a set of finite element equations for temperature field analysis of reinforced concrete members are established by using methods of Galerkin weighted residual and backward difference. In the analysis, the temperaturedependent thermal properties of concrete are considered, and the iterative process of heat flow equilibrium is used for improving precision of the temperature field solution. Based on the theoretical research, a computer program TFARC (Temperature Field Analysis of RC) is developed with Matlab. The program can be used to analyze steady state thermal problems, linear transient thermal problems and nonlinear transient thermal problems. Comparison between numerical results with test data and the exact solutions shows that the program developed for temperature field analysis of reinforced concrete members is reliable.

Key words: difference in time domain, finite element, nonlinear, temperature field, reinforced concrete members