Concrete materials exhibit quasi-brittle behavior that is manifested by the existence of stable crack growth before the peak and strain softening beyond the peak stress. This behavior often disables the application of conventional tensile strength criteria and provides a possibility of using fracture mechanics under an energy balance consideration. The present research developed a mathematical model based on nonlinear fracture mechanics and stress analysis of a coupled shrinkage-creep problem. With a computer program, this model has been applied to predict shrinkage cracking of concrete ring specimens made with different compositions. The results show that the theoretical predictions of cracking time from this modeling are comparable with the experimental data. The comparison of the results from the present modeling with that from tensile strength criteria is also discussed in this paper.
展开▼
