## 1 Introduction  
With the continuous development of high-rise buildings, the height of buildings is constantly increasing, thus posing increasing challenges to the foundation of buildings. Generally, a deeper foundation can provide a better safety factor for the whole building [1]. Thus, in the future, the depth of the building foundation can be predicted to increase. However, increased foundation depth can cause several problems. One such problem is associated with the construction of mass concrete, which is receiving growing research interest [2; 3; 4; 5; 6]. In particular, heat of hydration is a major problem of mass concrete. When the internal temperature of concrete exceeds a certain limit, it will produce large thermal stress, which will lead to internal premature cracks in concrete [7; 8; 9]. Such cracks are known as thermal cracks in construction. The main principle of controlling the thermal cracks in a construction is either to reduce the production of heat of hydration or to dissipate the heat so as not to accumulate it inside concrete.  
At present, the three main methods for controlling construction temperature cracks include: (i) installing a pre-buried cooling water pipe, (ii) covering with a thermal insulation material, and (iii) adding a new material (PCM- Phase Change Material) in concrete. [PERSON] _et al._[10] developed a vertical pipe cooling method and tested it in a wall-type mass concrete specimen to validate the method. The experimental result showed that the temperature of the concrete specimen with the vertical pipe cooling system was 8-14 \({}^{\circ}\)C lower than that of the control specimen without the vertical pipe cooling system. Some construction measures [11; 12] have adopted thermal insulation material to cover mass concrete in order to control thermal cracks in mass concrete. Some other studies [13; 14; 15] have investigated the use of phase change materials (PCM) to limit the rise in temperature of mass concrete. For the pre-buried cooling water pipe method, concrete should be embedded with a large number of pipelines; the process is complex and costly. If the treatment measure for the permanently buried steel pipe is not enough, it will lead to internal defects within a concrete structure. For the method of covering with a thermal insulation material, the materials used are not environmentally friendly, and are also unsuitable for the high strength mass concrete that requires a relatively larger cement content. The new materials (PCM materials), because of their relatively immature technology and high cost, are not widely used. In the meantime, a new technology of circulating water to control the thermal cracking in mass concrete foundation has emerged [16; 17; 18]. The circulating water comes from well points used for dewatering and from rainfall. Water is stored in a thermostat tank and the initial temperature of the water is adjusted to a specified temperature. Water with an appropriate temperature is brought into the temperature drop pool lying above the foundation slab. The temperature difference between the surface and the interior (core) of mass concrete is finally achieved by changing the temperature and the depth of water in the thermostat tank and varying the temperature in the drop pool.  
In this paper, an experimental study (temperature monitoring) is performed by utilizing the new technology of circulating water in a mass concrete foundation in the construction of \"A\" and \"D\" areas of the project--Zhongguancun No. 1 in China (the project has four working areas which are named A, B, C and D). The variation in the internal temperature field of mass concrete is analyzed by using the finite element software MIDAS/CIVIL to simulate the 3D temperature field. The proposed method provides an alternative practical basis for preventing thermal cracks in mass concrete.