Sunday, April 26, 2020

Mechanisms of Crack Formation and Propagation in SFRC

Mechanisms of Crack Formation and Propagation in SFRC


The first crack that appears in a beam normally is in correspondence of the region where the bending moment is maximum and the shear force is small; the cracks are aligned with each other and, more or less, perpendicular to the flexural stress; they are, therefore, in mode I condition. As visible in a normal load‐deflection plot, at a certain point, the behavior from linear becomes non‐linear


 A longitudinal reinforced concrete beam in three point bending. First flexural cracks appear in the region of maximum bending moment (a) accompanied by nonlinearity in load deflection response (denoted by an asterisk in (b)). More flexural cracks appear away from the region of maximum moment under increasing load (c), and a dominant crack propagates towards load point until ultimate failure by crushing of compressive concrete (d).

Changing the beam dimensions or the reinforcement, another kind of collapse could be appreciated that consists into the formation of a secondary crack which crosses the first flexural cracks. This mode of failure (due to the combination of shear and normal stresses) is often sudden and unstable and it is called the diagonal tension mode.

Secondary crack crossing the flexural cracks leads to sudden brittle failure.

The sliding displacement of the inclined crack faces bring into play the aggregate interlock which gives a contribution to the total shear strength. The contribution of dowel action, aggregate interlock and bond stress due to slip are very hard to quantify and even fracture mechanics is not able to describe the crack propagation in a correct way.


Fiber Bridging
The fiber bridging, like the aggregate one, depends on many parameters and, for simplicity, an isolated fiber is investigated along a crack. The fiber contributes to dissipate energy to: (1) matrix fracture and matrix spalling, (2) fibermatrix interface debonding, (3) postdebonding friction between fiber and matrix (fiber pull out), (4) fiber fracture and (5) fiber abrasion and plastic deformation (or yielding) of the fiber.


                                                                    Steel Fiber pull-out

The mechanical behavior of FRC depends surely on the amount of fiber (which shows benefits from 1 % until 15 %, for engineered cementitious composites ECC), on the orientation of the fibers and largely on the pull‐out versus load (or load‐slip) behavior of the individual fibers. In particular, the pull‐out depends on the type and the mechanical/geometrical properties of the fibers, on the mechanical properties of the interface between fiber and matrix, on the angle of inclination of the fiber with respect to the direction of loading and on the mechanical properties of the matrix. A large amount of literature covers this subject.

(a) A schematic illustration of some of the toughening effects and crack front debonding, the Cook Gordon effect, and debonding and sliding in the crack wake. (b) Matrix spalling and matrix cracking. (c) Plastic bending (deformation) of inclined fiber during pullout – both at the crack and at the endanchor.

The fiber pull‐out behavior is the gradual deboning of an interface surrounding the fiber, followed by frictional slip and pull‐out of fiber.


The bond (responsible of the forces transmission between fiber and matrix) has different components:

          the physical and/or chemical adhesion between fiber and matrix;

          the frictional resistance;

          the mechanical component (arising from the fiber geometry, e.g. deformed,   crimped or hooked‐end);
          the fiber‐to‐fiber interlock.


                    Different deboning models for fiber pullout

The deboning criterion can be described with two different approaches:

  •     strength‐based criterion (or stress‐based) where it is assumed that the  deboning initiates when the interfacial shear stress exceeds the shear strength.
  •       Fracture‐based criterion that considers the deboning zone as an interfacial crack together with the evaluation of fracture parameters and energy consideration.

Once deboning has taken place, stress transfer develops owing to frictional resistance that, in its turn, can be described, as depicted in, with the following different relationships:

  •         constant friction
  •               decaying friction (or slip softening)
  •         Slip hardening friction.                 






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