Flexural fatigue analysis of self-compacting concrete beams

Abstract

Results of an investigation of the probability distributions and flexural fatigue performance of self-compacting concrete beams are presented. The fatigue tests were carried out with a 100 kN capacity closed-loop servo-controlled actuator on 100 × 100 × 500 mm size beam specimens under four-point flexural loading. The static flexural strength of the self-compacting concrete was determined before the fatigue tests. The test data have been used to examine the distribution of fatigue life of self-compacting concrete at different stress levels. It has been shown that the statistical distribution of fatigue life of self-compacting concrete at a given stress level can be modelled by the two-parameter Weibull distribution with its distribution parameters estimated by different methods of analysis. The results indicate that there was lower variability in the distribution of fatigue life of self-compacting concrete compared to that of normally vibrated concrete. The fatigue life data have also been presented in the form of an S–N diagram and the two-million-cycles fatigue strength of self-compacting concrete has been found to be marginally higher than that of normally vibrated concrete. The fatigue life data of normally vibrated concrete used for comparison were obtained from the literature.