The influence of various loading rates on concrete fracture surface areas

Abstract The fracture surface areas of concrete prisms that were tested in bending under various loading rates are presented in this paper. Loading rates corresponding to quasi-static, impact and blast were applied to cover a wide range of load action that may be applied on a concrete structure over its lifetime. It was verified experimentally that the fracture surface tends to decrease with increasing loading rate from quasi-static to hard impact. However, fracture surface gained under the blast experiments do not follow this trend as there are probably other factors governing the response to the blast. It seems that the inertia or the stress concentration at the crack tip are the governing factors for the dynamic increase factor (DIF) and less for the fracture surface, while the different physical characteristics of the testing method for blast versus quasi-static or impact loading may also influence the results.