Title:
Damage Accumulation Comparison of Fiber-Reinforced Concrete Using Repeated Drop Impact Testing
Author(s):
Andrew D. Sorensen, Robert J. Thomas, Ryan Langford and Abdullah Al-Sarfin
Publication:
Symposium Paper
Volume:
347
Issue:
Appears on pages(s):
127-137
Keywords:
drop-weight impact, damage prediction, fiber reinforced concrete, impact testing standards
DOI:
10.14359/51732661
Date:
3/1/2021
Abstract:
The impact resistance of concrete is becoming an increasingly important component of insuring the
durability and resilience of critical civil engineering infrastructure. Design engineers are not currently able to use
impact resistance as a performance-based specification in concrete due to a lack of a reliable standardized impact test
for concrete. An improved method of the ACI standard, ACI 544.2R-89 Measurement of Properties of Fiber
Reinforced Concrete, is developed that provides a resistance curve as a function of impact energy and number of
blows (N) to failure. The curve provides information about the life cycle (N) under repeated sub-critical impact events
and an estimate of the critical impact energy (where N=1), whereas the previous method provided only a relative
value. The generated impact-fatigue curve provides useful information about damage accumulation under repeated
impact events and the effectiveness of the fiber-reinforcement. In this paper, the improved method is demonstrated
for three fiber types: steel, copolymer polypropylene, and a monofilament polypropylene. Additionally, the analytical
solution for the specimen geometry is given as well as the theoretical considerations behind the development of the
impact-life curve. The use of a specimen geometry provides a path to generalize the test results to full-scale structures.