Tensile stress-crack width law for steel fibre reinforced self-compacting concrete obtained from indirect (splitting) tensile tests

In this work, model fracture parameters of steel fibre reinforced self-compacting concrete (SFRSCC) were derived from the numerical simulation of indirect splitting tensile tests. The combined experimental and numerical research allowed a comparison between the stress-crack width (sigma-w) relationship acquired straightforwardly from direct tensile tests, and the sigma-w response derived from inverse analysis of the splitting tensile tests results. For this purpose a comprehensive nonlinear 3D finite element (FE) modeling strategy was developed. A comparison between the experimental results obtained from splitting tensile tests and the corresponding FE simulations confirmed the good accuracy of the proposed strategy to derive the sigma-w law for these composites. It is concluded that the post-cracking tensile laws obtained from inverse analysis provided a close relationship with the ones obtained from the experimental uniaxial tensile tests. 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.