Flexural fatigue life analysis of self compacting concrete containing 100% coarse recycled concrete aggregates

Abstract

This study is an attempt to examine the fatigue life under flexural loading of self compacting concrete (SCC) made by 100% substitution of natural aggregates (NA) by coarse recycled concrete aggregates (RCA). A comparative analysis has been made between the previous and present investigations conducted on the flexural fatigue life analysis of SCC made by incorporating RCA and NA respectively. The fatigue life distributions and fatigue strength or endurance limit corresponding to two million cycles are the key parameters that are evaluated. Static flexural and flexural fatigue tests have been conducted on closed loop servo-controlled actuator of capacity 100 kN. Prior to the fatigue tests, 84 static flexural tests were conducted and then fatigue tests were conducted on 112 beam specimens of standard size of 100 mm × 100 mm × 500 mm by four point loading. A comparative analysis has been done between the SCC mixes made with RCA as well as NA, results reveal that two parameter weibull distribution is a sound and valid assumption for the fatigue life modeling of SCC made with RCA. Further, analysis by Graphical method, method of moments and method of maximum likelihood has been employed in order to compute the values of weibull distribution parameters. The values of weibull distribution parameters obtained for SCC made with RCA is on the smaller side when compared with the studies conducted on SCC made by incorporating NA in the present study and past, which reflects higher variance in the fatigue life data of SCC made by incorporating RCA. Fatigue strength/endurance limit corresponding to two million cycles has been computed as 57%, which is on lower side as compared to the SCC made by incorporating NA in present and previous studies.