Study of crack patterns of fiber-reinforced concrete (FRC) specimens subjected to static and fatigue testings using CT-scan technology

Abstract

This paper demonstrates the widely accepted hypothesis that the compressive testing is a particular case of a cyclic test where failure occurs during the first cycle. To perform this, a test on 32 fiber-reinforced high-performance concrete specimens have been carried out. Sixteen of them have been tested under low-cycle fatigue compressive loading up to failure. Eight of them have been tested under monotonic compressive loading, until failure too. And the last eight specimens have remained intact. All of them have been scanned using a Computed Tomography (CT) Scan in order to define the pattern of their damage, which includes voids and cracks. The results show that the average damage maps of monotonic and fatigue series are statistically identical, which confirms the hypothesis previously described. In addition, both series are different to the intact series, which means that not a random damage distribution occurs when specimens collapse.