Comparison of the mechanical properties and constitutive models of carbon fiber-reinforced coral concrete cubes and prisms under uniaxial compression

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Carbon fiber reinforced coral concrete (CFRCC) plays a crucial role in island construction. In engineering applications, CFRCC is often subjected to complex stress states. Multiaxial stress studies usually use cubes, and in order to maintain research consistency, uniaxial studies also often use cubes. Traditional uniaxial stress studies mainly use prisms. However, the differences in uniaxial compression mechanical properties between these two types of specimens have not been thoroughly studied. To fill this gap, this study conducted uniaxial compression tests on cubes and compared the results with previous tests on prisms.The results showed that the failure patterns of the two types of specimens were different. The main cracks of the cubes were vertically distributed, while the main cracks of the prisms mostly unfolded diagonally. The addition of carbon fibers (CFs) reduced the number of large cracks and increased the number of microcracks. The stress-strain curves, peak stress, peak strain, and initial elastic modulus of the two types of specimens show similar variations with CFs, and CFs significantly improve the mechanical properties of coral concrete. The constitutive models based on prisms cannot accurately describe the mechanical behavior of cubes, therefore, we proposed revised constitutive models. The revised constitutive models can accurately describe the mechanical behavior of cubes. This study laid the foundation for subsequent research on multiaxial stress.