RELATION OF CONCRETE FRACTURE-TOUGHNESS TO ITS INTERNAL STRUCTURE

When subjected to tensile loads, concrete failure often initiates at the interfacial defects between the mortar and coarse aggregates. The branching of an interfacial crack into the mortar may form a dominant crack which leads to the eventual fracture plane. A simplified model, accounting approximately the physical events experienced by such a dominant crack, is developed to relate the internal structure and mechanisms of deformations to the post-peak behavior and fracture toughness of concrete. © 1990.