Fracture Analysis and Remaining Life Assessment of Ultra High Strength Concrete Beams

This paper presents the details of crack growth study and remaining life assessment of concrete specimens made up of ultra-high-strength concrete (UHSC) . Flexural fatigue tests have been conducted on UHSC beams under constant amplitude loading with a stress ratio of 0.2. A “Net K” model has been proposed by using nonlinear fracture mechanics principles for crack growth analysis and remaining life prediction. SIF (K) has been computed by using the principle of superposition. Bilinear tension softening obtained through inverse analysis corresponding to size-independent fracture energy . Remaining life values have been predicted and compared with the corresponding experimental values and observed that they are in good agreement with each other.