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Tensile fatigue behaviour of ultra-high performance fibre reinforced concrete (UHPFRC)

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Abstract

The tensile fatigue behaviour of ultra-high performance fibre reinforced concrete (UHPFRC) under constant amplitude fatigue cycles is presented. Three series of uniaxial tensile fatigue tests up to a maximum of 10 million cycles were conducted with the objective to determine the endurance limit of UHPFRC that was supposed to exist for this material. The fatigue tests reveal that an endurance limit exists in all three domains of UHPFRC tensile behaviour at S-ratios ranging from 0.70 to 0.45 with S being the ratio of the maximum fatigue stress to the elastic limit strength of UHPFRC. Rather large variation in local specimen deformations indicates significant stress and deformation redistribution capacity of the UHPFRC bulk material enhancing the fatigue behaviour. The fatigue fracture surface of UHPFRC shows features of the fatigue fracture surfaces of steel, i.e. fatigue crack propagation is identified by a smooth surface while final fracture leads to rather rough surface. Various fatigue damaging mechanisms due to fretting and grinding as well as tribocorrosion are identified.

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  1. Laboratory of Maintenance and Safety of Structures (MCS), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Station 18, 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Tohru Makita & Eugen Brühwiler

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  1. Tohru Makita
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  2. Eugen Brühwiler
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Correspondence to Tohru Makita.

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Makita, T., Brühwiler, E. Tensile fatigue behaviour of ultra-high performance fibre reinforced concrete (UHPFRC). Mater Struct 47, 475–491 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1617/s11527-013-0073-x

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