It has been well over thirty years since Hillerborg and Bazant presented their land- mark papers (cohesive crack and size effect models respectively), and since the author submitted his Ph.D. dissertation on the application of fracture mechanics to concrete. Yet, the practical applica- tions of fracture mechanics have been few and far in between. In
Service life of reinforced concrete structures is limited in most cases by migration processes of CO2 and of dissolved aggressive compounds such as chlorides and sulfates in the pore space of concrete. The rate of these transport processes depends on the total porosity and the pore size distribution. Both values change with progressive hydration of
The stress distribution in the vicinity of circular perforations has been studied by Kirsch over a century ago [1]. Inglis extended the analysis of circular openings to elliptical holes [4] which subsequently led to the development of linear elastic and nonlinear inelastic fracture mechanics. This paper revisits the fundamentals of elastic stress concentrations in the
Alkali-silica reaction (ASR) is one of the most severe attacks on concrete. There are several causes, one of which is the cracking of grains of slow/late aggregates in alkaline environment. Cracking can start in the interior of grains when there are defects or when there are minerals inside which dissolve due to the action of
Hydrogen embrittlement is believed to be one of the main reasons for cracking of steel structures under stress and stress corrosion cracking process. To control and prevent the cracking of steel it is necessary to understand the chemical and physical properties of hydrogen inside iron. Usually, pre-stressed steels are high strength steels that include a
Effects of aggregate type on the mechanical behavior of both normal- and high-strength concretes were investigated under bending and mechanical properties under compression. Basalt, sandstone, Eocene and Devonian crushed limestone coarse aggregates were used in the concrete mixtures. For each coarse aggregate type, normal and high strength concretes were made with the same Portland cement
Accurate knowledge of stress/displacement field in a cracked specimen is very important for fracture analysis and for instance in the case of quasi-brittle materials, where the zone of non- linear behavior affecting the overall fracture process is larger than in other (brittle) materials, it can play a key role. In this paper, it is shown
Several models for chloride ingress are being developed in order to calculate service life of the reinforcement. This work presents a numerical solution to approach the behavior of a highly corroded beam in presence of chloride environment during 26 years. In order to make the study, a comparison of the numerical pattern of fracture with
This paper presents a crack model that couples the benefits of the damage mechanics approach and the extended finite element method (XFEM). A local crack-tracking technique is devel- opedtopropagatea crack pattern along a single row of finite elements as a function of the equivalent principal stress direction. The level-sets are computed to predict the crack
This article addresses the fundamental issue of shear transfer across rough joints, a problem of paramount importance in several civil engineering applications. Starting from the examination of the experimental results obtained from shear tests on concrete-concrete joints, rock- rock joints and concrete-soil interfaces, the main features of the physical phenomenon are presented. The experimental results