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Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference: GR/M78106/01
Title: SIZE EFFECT IN THE STRENGTH OF CONCRETE STRUCTURES
Principal Investigator: Karihaloo, Professor BL
Other Investigators:
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
Department: Sch of Engineering
Organisation: Cardiff University
Scheme: Standard Research (Pre-FEC)
Starts: 31 December 1999 Ends: 30 December 2001 Value (£): 96,473
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:
Civil Engineering Materials
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:
Construction
Related Grants:
Panel History:  
Summary on Grant Application Form
The research involves three tasks. The first is to provide a rational explanation, using an appropriate non-linear fracture theory, as to why the failure strength of concrete structures reduces when their size increases and as to why the predictions of this non-statistical size effect from tests on specimens with deep notches and on those with no notches are different. For this theoretical work it is essential to know accurately the compliance functions and the stress fields ahead of a notch in the commonly-used test geometries - TPNB, CT, WLCT - over a wide range of notch depths. The development of these compliance functions and stress fields suing finite element computations is the second major research task. An improved hybrid stress element will be used in these computations to ensure high accuracy. Whenever possible, the compliance functions will be compared with those obtained using weight functions. The final task is the verification of the theory by experiment. Tests will be conducted on above specimens of three different sizes (and three span to depth ratios for TPNB) made from concretes of two grades. The notch to depth ratio in each case will be varied between 0.05 and 0.50.
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Organisation Website: http://www.cf.ac.uk