Print Email Facebook Twitter Fracture Mechanics of an Elastic Softening Material like Concrete Title Fracture Mechanics of an Elastic Softening Material like Concrete Author Reinhardt, H.W. Faculty Civil Engineering and Geosciences Department Stevin Laboratory Date 1984-01-01 Abstract Concrete is modelled as a linear elastic softening material and introduced into fracture mechanics. A discrete crack is considered with softening zones at the crack tips. Following the approach of Dugdale/Barenblatt, closing stresses are applied to the crack faces in the softening zone. The stresses are described by a power function. Relations are worked out between the remote stress on a cracked plate, the tensile strength of the material and the size of the softening zone. The finite width of a plate is considered and so are various stress distributions of the softening zone. Experiments were performed to estabilish the stress-strain behaviour of concrete in deformation-controlled uniaxial tensile loading. Furthermore, it was investigated whether cyclic loading affects the static envelope curve. A qualitative model is presented which illustrates the effect of prepeak cyclic loading on deformation and stress distribution in a specimen. The results show that nonlinear fracture mechanics can be applied to concrete. The loadbearing capacity of a cracked plate can be predicted with reasonable accuracy. As appears from the experiments, the application of this approach to cyclic loading is very promising. To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:7e908683-e816-4c4f-928f-03103ed2780e Publisher Delft University of Technology ISSN 0046-7316 Source HERON, 29 (2), 1984 Part of collection Institutional Repository Document type journal article Rights (c) 1984 Reinhardt, H.W. Files PDF Reinhardt_1984.pdf 2.86 MB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:7e908683-e816-4c4f-928f-03103ed2780e/datastream/OBJ/view