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Optical method for measuring slow crack growth in cementitious materials

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Abstract

The double-torsion (DT) test is commonly used to calculate slow or subcritical crack velocities in (quasi-)brittle engineering materials directly from the measured load relaxation of notched DT-specimens. In cementitious materials a significant part of the recorded load relaxation in the DT-test may be due to specimen creep deformation, and this would then lead to overestimated crack velocities. In this paper we describe a method to optically measure slow crack growth in cementitious materials by carrying out DT-tests under the optical microscope or inside the environmental SEM. Crack tip detection is facilitated by digital image correlation of the time-lapse microscope recordings. DT-tests at 10 % relative humidity in hardened cement paste (with w/c-ratio of 0.4, 0.5 and 0.6) showed that optically measured crack velocities were significantly lower than those calculated from the DT-specimen relaxation. In many experiments the subcritical crack growth rapidly stopped, while an ongoing specimen load relaxation was recorded. At 90 % relative humidity, load-relaxation in the DT-test was much stronger than at 10 % relative humidity, because subcritical cracking and creep-induced relaxation both increase with moisture content.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Mariano Pauli, Ernst Bleiker, Heinz Richner, Gabriele Peschke, Carsten Rieger, Dominik Meyer, Robert Flatt for their assistance in this project. This project was financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF), project nr. 200021-119787.

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  1. Institute for Building Materials, ETH-Zürich, Schafmattstrasse 6, 8093, Zürich, Switzerland

    W. Cai & J. Bisschop

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  1. W. Cai
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  2. J. Bisschop
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Correspondence to W. Cai.

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Cai, W., Bisschop, J. Optical method for measuring slow crack growth in cementitious materials. Mater Struct 45, 1613–1623 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1617/s11527-012-9860-z

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