• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.53 no.3
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• pp.481-495
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• 2015

Many hydropower stations in southwest China are located in regions of brittle rock mass with high geo-stresses. Under these conditions deep fractured zones often occur in the sidewalls of the underground caverns of a power station. The theory and methods of fracture and damage mechanics are therefore adopted to study the phenomena. First a flexibility matrix is developed to describe initial geometric imperfections of a jointed rock mass. This model takes into account the area and orientation of the fractured surfaces of multiple joint sets, as well as spacing and density of joints. Using the assumption of the equivalent strain principle, a damage constitutive model is established based on the brittle fracture criterion. In addition the theory of fracture mechanics is applied to analyze the occurrence of secondary cracks during a cavern excavation. The failure criterion, for rock bridge coalescence and the damage evolution equation, has been derived and a new sub-program integrated into the FLAC-3D software. The model has then been applied to the stability analysis of an underground cavern group of a hydropower station in Sichuan province, China. The results of this method are compared with those obtained by using a conventional elasto-plastic model and splitting depth calculated by the splitting failure criterion proposed in a previous study. The results are also compared with the depth of the relaxation and fracture zone in the surrounding rock measured by field monitoring. The distribution of the splitting zone obtained both by the proposed model and by the field monitoring measurements are consistent to the validity of the theory developed herein.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.499-506
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• 2001

Eight direct tension tests were conducted to study the bond characteristics and crack behavior in high-strength concrete axial members. The main variable was the concrete strength up to 61-63 MPa. The specimens consisted of two different types of the short specimens modeled the part between transverse cracks and the long specimens having numerous transverse cracks. The results obtained show that the bond strength increases in proportion to compressive strength. Thereby, in high-strength concrete the length of stress-disturbed region is shortened and the space of adjacent transverse cracks become smaller. Although the concrete strength varies from 25 MPa to 61 MPa, the split cracking loads remain constant, while transverse cracking loads vary as variation of concrete tensile strength. Accordingly, the current code provisions for development length may need reconsideration in high-strength concrete members, and it is recommended that either thicker cover or transverse reinforcement should be additionally provided for high-strength concrete members.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.29-36
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• 1987

In most of the structural members with initial cracks, the strength tends to decrease as the member size increases. This phenomenon is known as size effect. Among the structural materials of glass, metal or concrete, etc., concrete represents the size effect even without initial crack. According to the previous size effect law, the concrete member of very large size can resist little stress. Actually, however, even the large size member can resist some stress if there is no initial notch. This means that the fracture mechanism of very small or very large size member follows strength criterion, but the medium size member follows non-linear fracture mechanics (NLFM). In this study, the empirical models which are derived based on nonlinear fracture mechanics are proposed according to the regression analysis with the existing test data of large size specimens for uni-axial compression test, splitting tensile test and shear test of reinforced concrete beams.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.7-15
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• 2007

A mechanical model was developed to predict the behavior of point-loaded RC slender beams (a/d > 2.5) without stirrups. It is commonly accepted by most researchers that a diagonal tension crack plays a predominant role in the failure mode of these beams, but the failure mechanism of these members is still debatable. In this paper, it was assumed that diagonal tension failure was triggered by the concrete cover splitting due to the dowel action at the initial location of diagonal tension cracks, which propagate from flexural cracks. When concrete cover splitting occurred, the shape of a diagonal tension crack was simultaneously developed, which can be determined from the principal tensile stress trajectory. This fictitious crack rotates onto the crack tip with load increase. During the rotation, all forces acting on the crack (i.e, dowel force of longitudinal bars, vertical component of concrete tensile force, shear force by aggregate interlock, shear force in compression zone) were calculated by considering the kinematical conditions such as crack width or sliding. These forces except for the shear force in the compression zone were uncoupled with respect to crack width and sliding by the proposed constitutive relations for friction along the crack. Uncoupling the shear forces along the crack was aimed at distinguishing each force from the total shear force and clarifying the failure mechanism of RC slender beams without stirrups. In addition, a proposed method deriving the dowel force of longitudinal bars made it possible to predict the secondary shear failure. The proposed model can be used to predict not only the entire behavior of point-loaded RC slender shear beams, but also the ultimate shear strength. The experiments used to validate the proposed model are reported in a companion paper.

• Proceedings of the Korea Concrete Institute Conference
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• 2010.05a
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• pp.9-10
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• 2010

In this study, the static and low velocity impact tests for two-way concrete specimens strengthening with the CFRP sheets were carried out. The specimens that had a dimension of $50{\times}350{\times}350mm$ with 40 MPa plain concrete and steel fiber reinforced concrete which had same mixture to plain concrete and 0.75% steel fibers were fabricated. The specimens reinforced with the CFRP or steel fibers showed mixed failure modes, splitting and punching, also splitting cracks and fragments were much reduced than plain concrete specimens'. Two-way concrete members reinforced with the CFRP and steel fiber simultaneously dissipated 6.8 times larger energy than not-retrofitted members' under the low-velocity impact loading.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.475-482
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• 2014

This paper presents the experimental results concentrically reinforced concrete tension members and compares cracking behavior of amorphous steel fiber and normal steel fiber reinforced concrete members. Two kind of steel fibers were included as a major experimental parameter together with the six cover thickness to bar diameter ratio ($c/d_b$). The presence of amorphous steel fibers effectively controlled the splitting cracks initation and propagation. In the amorphous steel fiber reinforced specimens, no splitting cracks were observed that becomes higher with cover thickness to bar diameter ratio is 2.0. Crack spacing of the each specimens reinforced with amorphous steel fibers and normal steel fibers becomes larger with the increase in cover thickness, and also measured maximum and average crack spacing are significantly smaller than current design code provision. Based on the measured crack spacings, a relationships for predicting the crack spacing is proposed using the measured average crack spacing in amorphous steel fiber reinforced concrete tension members.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.545-557
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• 2009

In order to investigate dynamic damage mechanism of brittle materials, Split Hopkinson Pressure Bar (SHPB) have been adapted to apply different impact levels to rocks in South Korea. High resolution X-ray Computed Tomography (CT) was used to estimate the damage in tested rock samples nondestructively. The cracks which are parallel to the loading axis are visible on the contact surface with the incident bar under lower level of impact. The surface cracks disappeared with increment of impact level due to confined effect between the incident bar and sample, while axial splitting are happened near the outer surface.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.13-22
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• 2000

This paper describes the results obtained from 11 direct tension tests to explore the influence of concrete strength on tension stiffening behavior in reinforced concrete axial members. Three different concrete compressive strengths, 250, 650, and 900kgf/$\textrm{cm}^2$, were included as a main variable, while the ratio of cover thickness-to-rebar diameter was kept constant to be 2.62 to prevent from splitting cracking. As the results, it was appeared that, as higher concrete strength was used, less tension stiffening effect was resulted, and the residual deformation upon unloading was larger. In addition, the spacing between adjacent transverse cracks became smaller with higher concrete strength. The major cause for those results may be attributed to the fact that nonuniform bond stress concentration at both loaded ends and crack sections becomes severer as higher concrete is used, thereby local bond failure becomes more susceptible. From these findings, it would be said the increase in flexural stiffness resulting from using high-strength concrete will be much smaller than that predicted by the conventional knowledge. Finally, a factor accunting for concrete strength was introduced to take account for the effect of HSC on tension stiffening. This proposed equation predicts well the tension stiffening for the effect of HSC on tension stiffening. This proposed equation predicts well the tension stiffening behavior of these tests.

• Magazine of the Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.117-126
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• 2002

Concrete containing discontinuous discrete steel fiber in a normal concrete is called steel fiber reinforced concrete(SFRC). Tensile as well as flexural strengths of concrete could be substantially increased by introducing closely spaced fibers which delay the onset of tension cracks and increase the tension strength of cracks. However, many properties of SFRC have not been investigated, especially properties on repeated loadings. Thus, the purposes of this dissertation is to study the flexural fatigue characteristics of SFRC considering cumulative damage. A series of experimental tests such as compressive strength, splitting tensile strength, flexural strength, flexural fatigue, and two steps stress level fatigue were conducted to clarify the basic properties and fatigue-related properties of SFRC. The main experimental variables were steel fiber fraction (0, 0.4, 0.7, 1, 1.5%), aspect ratio (60, 83). The principal results obtained through this study are as follows: The results of flexural fatigue tests showed that the flexural fatigue life of SFRC is approxmately 65% of ultimate strength, while that of plain is less than 58%. Especially, the behavior of flexural fatigue life shows excellent performance at 1.0% of steel-fiber volume fraction. The cumulative damage test of high-low two stress levels is within the value of 0.6 ∼ 1.1, while that of low-high stress steps is within the value of 2.4 ∼ 4.0.

• Magazine of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.91-100
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• 1990

In most of the structural members with initial cracks(or initial notches), the strength tends to decmase as the member size increases. This phenomenon is known as size effect. Among the structural materials of glass, metal or concrete, etc., concrete represents the size effect even without initial crack. According to the previous size effect law, the concrete mem¬ber of very large size can resist little stress. Actually, however, even the large size member can resist some stress if there is no initial crack made artificially, consequently showing a rather milder strength reduction compared to the severe strength reduction by tbe previously derived size effect law. In this study, the theoretical size effect law previously derived by Z.P. Bazant was discussed based on nonlinear fracture mechanics of concrete structures With dissimilar initial cracks, and the prediction models are proposed by regression analysis with the existing test data of more large size speciments for splitting tensile strength, shear strength and uniaxial compressive strength tests.