Construction and Building Materials 188 (2018) 645–655

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Construction and Building Materials

j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w . e l s e v i e r . c o m / l oc a t e / c o n b u i l d m a t

Size effect on peak axial strain and stress-strain behavior of concrete subjected
to axial compression
a b,c,⇑ b
Peng Chen , Changyong Liu , Yuyin Wang
a School of Civil Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150090, China
b Key Lab of Structures Dynamic Behavior and Control of the Ministry of Education, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150090, China
c Key Lab of Smart Prevention and Mitigation of Civil Engineering Disasters of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150090, China

highlights

Study of size effect on peak axial stress, peak axial strain, and elastic modulus in test. Comparison of the
current size effect formulas of peak axial stress.
Analysis of the size effect law of peak axial strain.
Proposal of size-dependent stress-strain curve model.

article info abstract

Article history: Twenty-four cylinders with different diameters (150 mm D 460 mm) and compressive strengths (C60, C45) were tested until
Received 4 February 2018 failure to study the size effect behavior of concrete subjected to axial com-pression. The size effects on peak axial stress, peak
Received in revised form 25 May 2018 axial strain, and elastic modulus were studied. Experimental results showed that peak axial stress and peak axial strain of the
Accepted 13 August 2018
specimens tended to decrease with the increase in specimen diameter. The elastic modulus remained nearly constant when the
specimen diameter increased, indicating that the size effect on the elastic modulus was insignificant. In addition, the size
effects of peak axial stress and peak axial strain were analyzed based on existing the-ories and test data in the literature. A size-
Keywords:
dependent stress–strain model of a concrete material sub-jected to axial compression was then proposed.
Size effect
Concrete
Peak axial strain
Stress-strain relationship 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Axial compression

1. Introduction
In general, the compressive strength of concrete is accepted to decrease
with the increasing concrete specimen size. This property is referred to as the
size effect of concrete. Based on the research of Blanks and Sakino [1,2], the
compressive strength of a concrete specimen decreases by 18.3% when the
specimen diameter increases from 150 mm to 900 mm. Thus far, a number of
experi-mental and theoretical investigations have been conducted to study the
size effect of concrete. Gonnerman [3] first studied the size effect of concrete
in 1925. Blanks [1] then conducted a test to investigate the influence of
aggregate size and column diameter
⇑ Corresponding author at: Room 313, School of Civil Engineering, Harbin Institute of
Technology, Huanghe Road #73, Nangang District, Harbin 150090, Heilongjiang Province,
China.
E-mail addresses: liuchangyong@hit.edu.cn (C. Liu), wangyuyin@hit.edu.cn (Y. Wang).
on the concrete compressive strength. The size effect of concrete has attracted
considerable attention since then. The applications of mass concrete and high-
strength concrete are growing with the continuous increase in building height
and bridge span length. Thus, research on the size effect of concrete is also
expanding. Experimental studies [4–12] were conducted to investigate the
influence of section size on the axial compression strength of con-crete,
which demonstrates the size effect of concrete. The column diameter in the
test conducted by Burtscher and Kollegger [10] and Muciaccia et al [12]
reached 800 mm, and the size effect behavior was much more pronounced.
The effects of the height-diameter ratio and cross-sectional shape on the size
effect of con-crete have been investigated by researchers [12–16]. The size
effects of a cube and a prism were found to be more significant than those of a
cylinder, while the variation in the nominal com-pressive strength was more
related to the increase in the absolute size of the compressed sections rather
than to the increase in the slenderness ratio when H/D was larger than 2 [12].
In addition,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2018.08.072 0950-
0618/ 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 Construction and Building Materials 182 (2018) 346–359

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Construction and Building Materials

j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w . e l s e v i e r . c o m / l o ca t e / c o n b u i l d m a t

The effect of material stress-strain characteristics on the ultimate stress and critical
buckling strain of flat plates subjected to uniform axial compression

a,⇑ b c a a
Onyekachi Ndubuaku , Xiaoben Liu , Michael Martens , J.J. Roger Cheng , Samer Adeeb
a Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 1R1, Canada
b College of Mechanical and Transportation Engineering, China University of Petroleum, Beijing 102249, China
c TransCanada Pipelines Ltd., Calgary, Alberta T2P 5H1, Canada

highlights graphical abstract

A novel and robust mathematical model for

stress-strain approximation is presented.

Strain-hardening is parameterized within the

natural stress-strain space continuum.

Buckling capacities of plates made of YPT

materials are generally indistinguishable.

Proportionality limit of plate material has

significant effect on buckling capacity.

article info abstract

Article history:
The buckling capacity of uniformly compressed flat plates has been investigated in this study. The compressive test two
Received 16 August 2017
variables are needed to determine the maximum limit, namely the force and surface area.
Received in revised form 11 June 2018
Accepted 12 June 2018 Compressive strength values obtained from the comparison between force and surface area .Material properties were
characterized based on parameterization of the stress-strain curves using a simple and novel mathematical expression.
Idealized stress-strain relationships were developed using the proposed material model and extensive parametric numerical
analyses were conducted to investigate the effect of the material stress-strain properties on the buckling capacity of flat plates.
Keywords: For stress-strain curves with a yield plateau, the results of the parametric study showed a minimal influence of the material
Flat plate properties on the buckling capacity of the plates whereas a significant effect of the strain-hardening properties was observed in
Buckling plates with round-house curves. Ultimately, the proposed stress-strain model was shown to be remarkably useful for capturing
Post-buckling the relevant intricacies associated with material nonlinearity when predicting the buckling capacity and post-buckling behavior
Uniaxial compression of uniformly-compressed flat plates.
Load-axial shortening
Ultimate strength 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Critical buckling strain
Deformation capacity
Stress-strain model
Strain-hardening

⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: ndubuaku@ualberta.ca (O. Ndubuaku).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2018.06.100
0950-0618/ 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.