Effect of fracture path on the fracture energy of high-strength concrete

The paper indicates that there may not exist a direct relationship between fracture energy and compressive strength. The fractal theory is used to quantitatively study the fracture surface and the relationship between fracture energy and fracture characteristics. The test results show that fractal dimension increases with the increase of maximum aggregate size. For the concrete with higher water–binder ratio, fractal dimension increases more rapidly than that for the concrete with lower water–binder ratio. For the same water–binder ratio, fracture energy of concrete increases with the increase of fractal dimension. Fracture energy for lower water–binder ratio increases with fractal dimension more rapidly than that for higher water–binder ratio. The ductility index is used to assess the brittleness of concrete. There exists a good lineal correlation between ductility index and fractal dimension for all test series. Thus, fractal dimension can be used as a parameter to characterize the brittleness of concrete.