Size effect on Cracking in Concrete: Experimentation and Modelling of crack openings

This book is about the relationship between structure size and crack propagation during mechanical loadings. It is commonly accepted that there is a size effect on the nominal resistance of quasi-brittle materials such as concrete. This effect must be taken into account when designing the ultimate behaviour of concrete structures in order to avoid excessive damage and crack openings. Presented here is an experimental method to determine crack openings using the digital image correlation technique, which is a robust and highly precise tool for measuring fracture such as crack opening and crack length. Many numerical models can be used to describe crack or damage growth in concrete. This book describes the use of non-local continuum damage mechanics to reproduce cracks and size effect. An isotropic non-local strain softening damage constitutive law is used where numerical global and local results are correlated with the experimental data and conclusions are drawn on the advantages and limitations of using the adopted modelling strategy to reproduce size effect in concrete structures.