Fracture and Damage Behaviors of Concrete in the Fractal Space

Abstract

The fracture toughness, the driving force and the fracture energy for an infinite plate with a fractal crack are investigated in the fractal space in this work. The perimeter-area relation is adopted to derive the transforma-tion rule between damage variables in the fractal space and Euclidean space. A plasticity yield criterion is introduced and a damage variable tensor is decomposed into tensile and compressive components to describe the distinct behaviors in tension and compression. A plastic damage constitutive model for concrete in the Euclidean space is developed and generalized to fractal case according to the transformation rule of damage variables. Numerical calculations of the present model with and without fractal are conducted and compared with experimental data to verify the efficiency of this model and show the necessity of considering the fractal effect in the constitutive model of concrete. The structural response and mesh sensitivity of a notched unre-inforced concrete beam under 3-point bending test are theoretical studied and show good agreement with the experimental data.