Dynamic fracture of concrete compact tension specimen: Experimental and numerical study

Compared to quasi-static loading concrete loaded by higher loading rates acts in a different way. There is an influence of strain-rate and inertia on resistance, failure mode and crack pattern. With increase of loading rate failure mode changes from mode-I to mixed mode. Moreover, theoretical and numerical investigations indicate that after the crack reaches critical velocity there is progressive increase of resistance and crack branching. These phenomena have recently been demonstrated and discussed by Ožbolt et al. (2011) on numerical study of compact tension specimen (CTS) loaded by different loading rates. The aim of the present paper is to experimentally verify the results obtained numerically. Therefore, the tests and additional numerical studies on CTS are carried out. The experiments fully confirm the results of numerical prediction discussed in Ožbolt et al. (2011). The same as in the numerical study it is shown that for strain rates lower than approximately 50/s the structural response is controlled by the rate dependent constitutive law, however, for higher strain rates crack branching and progressive increase of resistance is observed. This is attributed to structural inertia and not the rate dependent strength of concrete. Maximum crack velocity of approximately 800 m/s is measured before initiation of crack branching. The comparison between numerical and experimental results shows that relatively simple modeling approach based on continuum mechanics, rate dependent microplane model and standard finite elements is capable to realistically predict complex phenomena related to dynamic fracture of concrete.