STUDY ON FRACTURE PARAMETERS OF SELF-COMPACTING CONCRETE

Abstract

This paper evaluates the fracture and material properties of self-compacting concrete (SCC) derived from the various non-linear fracture models from experiments through the three point bending tests on a series of geometrically similar beams. Using these properties as input data, computer simulation is performed using ATENA software by both smeared and discrete crack approach. A good agreement is observed between the experimental load-CMOD curves and the curves predicted by simulation. The total fracture energy , critical crack tip opening displacement determined () by RILEM and the stress intensity factor ( ) determined by LEFM principle are found to be size dependent where as and initial fracture energy ( ) determined by RILEM are found to be material dependent properties. The size independent fracture energy is evaluated for SCCby tail end correction method. The influence of size effect and brittleness in SCC beams are identified. A bilinear crack model is proposed for SCC with a kink point. Efforts were made to link the fracture parameters of SCC to the proposed model. The co-ordinate of kink point such as stress ratio Ψ is directly calculated. Efforts are made to correlate the propagation of the cracks captured at increased loads during tests and simulation process on beams.