Determination of strength distribution of quasibrittle structures from mean size effect analysis

Abstract

This paper presents a new method to indirectly determine the probability distribution function of strength of quasibrittle structures. The method is derived within the framework of the finite weakest link model, which indicates that the size dependence of the mean structural strength can be calculated from the size effect on the probability distribution of the structural strength. By considering the inversion of this model, we show that the cumulative distribution function of structural strength can be explicitly determined from the parameters of the mean size effect curve. The proposed method is verified by a comprehensive set of experiments on asphalt mixture at a low temperature, which involves tests on both the strength histograms and the mean size effect. In the meantime, the agreement between the predicted and experimentally measured strength histograms of asphalt mixture specimens of different sizes further confirms the validity of the finite weakest link model.