Cracking of the concrete cover due to corrosion is defined as the serviceability limit state of reinforced concrete structures. This study evaluated the influence of a mineral admixture i.e. nano wollastonite on corrosion performance and serviceability of reinforced concrete structures by performing an accelerated corrosion test on ten reinforced concrete beams under a sustained load. To do so,...

Using large system sizes with extensive statistical sampling, we analyze the scaling properties of crack roughness and damage profiles in the three-dimensional random fuse model. The analysis of damage profiles indicates that damage accumulates in a diffusive manner up to the peak load, and localization sets in abruptly at the peak load, starting from a uniform damage landscape. The global crac...

In service, cracks or microcracks are usually present in concrete as a result of several mechanisms, for example the drying shrinkage, thermal gradients, freezing-thawing cycles, alkali-aggregate reaction and external loading. It has been realized that cracking can significantly accelerate the ingress of chlorides into concrete since it provides preferential flow channels and allow more chlorid...

Delamination of residually stressed thin film strips is analyzed to expose the dependence on strip width and filmysubstrate elastic mismatch. Isotropic films and substrates are assumed. The residual stress in the film is tensile and assumed to originate from mismatch due to thermal expansion or epitaxial deposition. Full and partial delamination modes are explored. In full delamination, the int...

Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) tag is a promising device for the management of products at a very low cost. Huge number of such low-cost sensors can be installed to the structure beforehand, after a disaster we can access to these sensors wirelessly and very easily. In this system, a printed sheet is applied to a part of structure in which crack will occur. Copper wire is connected to th...

This paper presents an experimental investigation on the crack width induced by the corrosion of reinforcing steel bars in concrete. Reinforcing steel bars with different diameters were corroded using an accelerated test in three types of concrete members, including 24 beams with corroded stirrup and 20 beams with corroded longitudinal reinforcing steel bars. The corrosion patterns and rusts ch...

We report a novel mode of quasi-static oscillatory crack propagation when a cutting tip of moderately large width is driven through a thin brittle polymer film. Experiments show that the amplitude and wavelength of the oscillatory crack paths scale linearly with the width of the cutting tip over a wide range of length scales but are independent of the width of the sheet and of the cutting speed...

An extensive experimental study of indentation and crack arrest statistics is presented for four different brittle materials (alumina, silicon carbide, silicon nitride, glass). Evidence is given that the crack length statistics is described by a universal (i.e., material independent) distribution. The latter directly derives from results obtained when modeling crack propagation as a depinning p...

A large wall with vertical cracks at mid-span, varying in width of up to 3 mm wide, had been declared capable of resisting a postulated seismic load. It was not straightforward to subsequently confirm, analytically, what influence the crack had on the wall’s capacity for lateral loading. It was assumed that it was likely that the horizontal reinforcement had yielded across the crack and thus th...

Link slabs designed for macroscopically crack free concrete bridge decks system were experimentally tested. The property requirements of the link slab material were considered. Special focus was placed on the fatigue and durability performance. Introduction of a ductile Engineered Cementitious Composite (ECC) material is proposed for its ability to control crack width and to exhibit high ductil...