Study on fracture characteristics of reinforced concrete wedge splitting tests

To study the influence on fracture properties of reinforced concrete wedge splitting test specimens by the addition of reinforcement, and the restriction of steel bars on crack propagation, 7 groups reinforced concrete specimens of different reinforcement position and 1 group plain concrete specimens with the same size factors were designed and constructed for the tests. Based on the double-K fracture criterion and tests, fracture toughness calculation model which was suitable for reinforced concrete wedge splitting tensile specimens has been obtained. The results show that: the value of initial craking load Pini and unstable fracture load Pun decreases gradually with the distance of reinforcement away from specimens