Abstract
Understanding the time-dependent brittle deformation behavior of concrete as a main building material is fundamental for the lifetime prediction and engineering design. Herein, we present the experimental measures of brittle creep failure, critical behavior, and the dependence of time-to-failure, on the secondary creep rate of concrete under sustained uniaxial compression. A complete evolution process of creep failure is achieved. Three typical creep stages are observed, including the primary (decelerating), secondary (steady state creep regime), and tertiary creep (accelerating creep) stages. The time-to-failure shows sample-specificity although all samples exhibit a similar creep process. All specimens exhibit a critical power-law behavior with an exponent of −0.51 ± 0.06, approximately equal to the theoretical value of −1/2. All samples have a long-term secondary stage characterized by a constant strain rate that dominates the lifetime of a sample. The average creep rate expressed by the total creep strain over the lifetime (tf-t0) for each specimen shows a power-law dependence on the secondary creep rate with an exponent of −1. This could provide a clue to the prediction of the time-to-failure of concrete, based on the monitoring of the creep behavior at the steady stage.
Highlights
When concrete is subjected to sustained loading, it exhibits the phenomenon of creep
Most of the work that has been pursued in the area of creep behavior was conducted at low levels of stress [4,5,6] and early-age creep [7], and the brittle creep behavior of concrete under sustained load levels that are close to its short-term strength is not well known
The experimental data presented in this paper demonstrated that the creep failure of concrete under compression exhibits the three typical evolutionary stages that lead to an eventual macroscopic failure
Summary
When concrete is subjected to sustained loading, it exhibits the phenomenon of creep. Concrete is brittle and under high-sustained loading, creep failure can occur after a certain time [8, 9] This behavior is referred to as static fatigue in materials, and it is important to understand the behavior of materials. The current knowledge of the brittle creep failure behavior of concrete under compression is comparatively not well defined, and it lacks complete experimental results It is important for the design and safety assessment of large concrete dams, concrete works in underground engineering, and so on. Through constant uniaxial compression tests for concrete, we discuss three regimes of concrete under constant load and introduce the simple rule between the axial deformation rate of the concrete and the rupture time This law has an important theoretical and practical significance for predicting concrete creep damage
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