Construction and Building Materials 229 (2019) 116922

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Construction and Building Materials

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Influence of aggregate size on flexural fatigue response of concrete

Sridhar Reddy Kasu, Sutapa Deb, Nilanjan Mitra ⇑, Amarnatha Reddy Muppireddy,
Sudhakar Reddy Kusam
Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, West Bengal, 721302, India

h i g h l i g h t s

The effect of nominal maximum aggregate size on fatigue life was studied.

3-paramter Weibull distribution fitting was done using A-D statistic.

Fatigue lives found to be very sensitive to stress levels rather than frequencies.

Distributions shows fatigue life of S10 mix had significantly higher than S20 mix.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Plain concrete used in pavements undergoes fatigue damage with repeated traffic and thermal loading.
Received 18 April 2019 Numerous studies were conducted previously to evaluate the effect of various parameters on the fracture
Received in revised form 3 September 2019 behavior of concrete. Nominal maximum aggregate size which is one of the parameters investigated in
Accepted 7 September 2019
the past, to evaluate the fracture characteristics was focused to influence the fracture energy of concrete
significantly. This could be due to a larger crack path and greater crack growth resistance offered by the
larger aggregates in the fracture process zone. Hence, it is worthwhile to investigate the effect of nominal
Keywords:
maximum aggregate size (NMAS) of aggregate on the fatigue life of concrete. This factor, if influential,
Aggregate size
Flexural fatigue
might be a feasible approach for field application to control the fatigue performance of concrete. In the
Constant stress amplitude present study, the effect of nominal maximum aggregate size was evaluated under different stress levels
Weibull distribution (80, 85, and 90%) and different frequencies of loading (2, 5, and 10 Hz). For this purpose, flexural fatigue
Survival plots test was conducted on concrete beam specimens. The specimens were prepared with a blend of fine
Dynamic loading aggregate and coarse aggregate with two different nominal maximum aggregate sizes (10 mm and
20 mm, designated as S10 and S20 respectively). A total of 100 specimens of
100 mm  100 mm  500 mm size were used in the experimental investigation. The results show that
the fatigue life of samples with S10 mixture is significantly higher compared to S20 mixture for 80% stress
level but are almost similar for 90% stress level irrespective of the loading frequency. The fatigue results
are in better agreement with three-parameter Weibull distribution compared to other distributions such
as lognormal as confirmed by the goodness of fit test Anderson-Darling statistic. The value of b, the
Weibull distribution characteristic shape parameter, obtained as less than 1.0 in this study, indicates
the risk of early life failures for the considered stress levels. The survival probability plots and p-value
statistics suggest that stress level influences the fatigue life estimation for both S10 and S20 samples
but not the loading frequency. Based on the present study, it can be concluded that smaller nominal max-
imum aggregate size is more beneficial for the fatigue performance of concrete.
Crown Copyright Ó 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction pavements, and offshore structures in which the structure is sub-

Evaluation of the flexural fatigue characteristics of concrete is
essential for understanding the performance of concrete bridges,
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: nilanjan@civil.iitkgp.ac.in (N. Mitra), manreddy@civil.iitkgp.
ac.in (A.R. Muppireddy), ksreddy@civil.iitkgp.ac.in (S.R. Kusam).
jected to repetitive fatigue loads by traffic in the case of bridges
and pavements, and by ocean waves for offshore structures.
Although some of these structures have reinforced concrete, many
are with plain concrete. Plain concrete is more vulnerable to failure
from repeated and static flexural loading compared to reinforced
concrete. The percentage of reinforcement in reinforced concrete
pavements is generally very small. Common examples of

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2019.116922
0950-0618/Crown Copyright Ó 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
2 S.R. Kasu et al. / Construction and Building Materials 229 (2019) 116922

pavements in which plain concrete is used are Jointed Plain Con-
crete Pavement (JPCP) and interlocking concrete block pavements.
These structures undergo cumulative fatigue damage over a period
of time due to the repeated application of traffic and thermal loads.
During the accumulation of fatigue damage, concrete is subjected
to crack propagation and stiffness degradation. The rate of stiffness
degradation or damage at the macro level is important for the pre-
diction of fatigue life. Stiffness degradation in concrete depends on
the type of constituents, method of specimen preparation, type of
loading, type of waveform [1,2] and other attributes. The con-
stituents of a typical plain concrete include coarse aggregates, fine
aggregates, cement, and water. It is well known that coarse aggre-
gates and fine aggregates act as filler materials in the matrix
formed due to cement hydration. When plain concrete is subjected
to repeated loads, the cracks originate primarily at the interface of
aggregates and hardened cement paste and/or at the void regions
which may be either at the interface regions or within the matrix.
With the change in the size of the coarse aggregates, it is expected
that the crack propagation path will change.
From the visualization of the internal random grain structure of
the normal and high strength concrete, change in any of the con-
stituents such as the quantity of cement, water/binder ratio, type,
size, shape, texture, and volume of the aggregates is found to be
influential on its fracture behavior/parameters. With a decrease
in the water/binder (w/b) ratio from 0.85 to 0.34 in the mix, an
increase in fracture energy, and fracture toughness was observed
[3,4]. The effect of w/b ratio on fracture energy was insignificant
(in the range of 0.2–0.3) [5]. In another study in which the volume
of aggregates was increased from 40 to 60%, there was an increase
in the fracture energy [6] and fracture toughness as measured by
acoustic emission method [7]. The shape [8] and texture [9] of
aggregates were also found to be significant in enhancing the frac-
ture toughness.
The weak link in the concrete material (with regard to strength)
is the hydrated mortar matrix. This matrix is primarily composed
of hydrated components of cement, calcium silicate hydrate (to
be specific). Larger aggregate size means more of these matrix
materials near the aggregate surfaces (due to less packing) which
might affect the overall strength and fatigue life of the concrete
mix. Besides this, larger the size of the aggregate more flat and
elongated the particles are likely to be. Flat and elongated aggre-
aggregate and the matrix. Thus, larger the aggregate, longer will
be the crack meandering and higher the fracture energy. With this
in perspective, the current study investigates whether the maxi-
mum size of the coarse aggregate in the mix influences the crack
propagation of concrete under flexure fatigue loading conditions.
The experimental framework detailing the materials used for
sample preparation, test setup, results from the experimental data
of flexural fatigue tests and their discussion are presented in the
following sections of the paper.
2. Experimental framework
2.1. Materials
Concrete mixtures were prepared using Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC 53) and
dry fly ash sourced from Ramco Cements (Kolaghat, West Bengal, India). The
detailed chemical compositions of OPC 53 and fly ash (class F) used in this study
were evaluated with the help of X-Ray Fluorescence spectrometer and are recorded
in previous literature [16]. The physical properties of the OPC 53 conforming to IS
12269 [17] and fly ash conforming to IS 3812-Part I, [18] are presented in Table 1.
As per ACI 226-1987 [19] and IRC SP 46-2013 [20], the percentage by volume of
fly ash was limited to 20% of the OPC cement in this study.
The fine aggregate used in this experimental program is river sand. The ratio of
sand to binder material (cement + pozzolanic materials like fly ash) was kept in this
study as 2 by weight. Two different gradations with nominal maximum aggregate
sizes of 10 mm and 20 mm were used to prepare the mixes. Concrete with a nom-
inal maximum aggregate size of 20 mm is usually used for thick concrete pave-
ments. The work carried out in this study was associated with ongoing research
work on thin concrete pavements (50–75 mm thickness). The thin concrete slabs
typically use 10 mm nominal maximum aggregate size. Generally, the usual prac-
tice is to select the maximum size of aggregate in such a way that the ratio of
the smallest dimension of the specimen or structural member to the maximum size
of aggregate is 2.5–4. Therefore, the study was intended to carry out on concrete
made with two nominal maximum aggregate size; 10 mm and 20 mm to evaluate
the fatigue performance of concrete for conventional thick concrete pavements
and thin concrete pavements. These are among the gradations recommended by
IS 383-1970 [21] for concrete. The properties of fine and coarse aggregates (CA)
are presented in Table 2.
The ratio of the weights of CA (10 or 20 mm nominal size) and binder material
(cement + pozzolanic materials like fly ash) was kept as 2 (by weight) in this study.
Fig. 1 shows the gradation of coarse and fine aggregates selected in this study. Mix
design was carried out to achieve a compressive strength of 40 MPa specified in IRC
58-2015 [22] for road works. The proportion of binder content (cementitious mate-
rial): fine aggregates: coarse aggregates was selected as 1:2:2 with a water-cement
(w/c) ratio of 0.45. The mixes were designed to have a characteristic compressive
strength of 40 MPa and a slump value of 50 mm. The proportions of different con-
stituents used in the two mixtures prepared using 10 mm and 20 mm nominal

gate are more conducive to the accumulation of water film next

to the aggregate resulting in weaker transition zone. Thus, the fati-
Table 1
gue performance of concrete with larger size aggregate is likely to Properties of Ordinary Portland Cement and Fly Ash.
have inferior fatigue performance compared to the concrete having
Properties OPC 53 Fly ash (Class F)
smaller size aggregate.
There are some studies reported in the literature in which the Specific gravity 3.15 2.20
Fineness by Blaine apparatus, m2/kg 399 730
effect of maximum aggregate size on the fracture response of plain
Normal consistency, % 30 –
and fiber concrete mixtures was investigated [4,5,9–15] through Initial setting time, minutes 147 –
crack propagation experiments conducted on notched beams. The Final setting time, minutes 273 –
conclusions from these studies indicate that as the maximum Soundness by Le-Chatelier apparatus, mm 0.20 –
aggregate size is increased, the fracture energy is also increased.
Even though a proper reason for this observation has not been pre-
sented in the previous studies, it can be expected that the crack Table 2
propagation time increases with an increase in the size of the Properties of Aggregate.
aggregate. It should be realized that crack in these types of tests
Properties Coarse aggregate Fine
typically propagates along one specific path and thereby if the aggregate
crack encounters a large aggregate in its path, the crack needs to 10 mm 20 mm

meander. As a result of this, the fracture energy of the sample Arithmetic mean 5.372 mm 4.608 mm –
increases with increase in maximum aggregate size. All these roughness
Specific gravity 2.48 2.51 2.66
investigations were conducted to evaluate the fracture characteris- Water absorption 1.78% 1.50% 0.60%
tics of cracks under static loading condition using a notched beam Existing moisture 0.48% 0.50% 0.90%
arrangement. There is hardly any literature available on the effect content
of aggregate size on the fatigue performance of concrete under Grading zone (as Single sized Single sized Zone III
per IS 383– aggregate of aggregate of
dynamic loading conditions. It is known that crack propagation
1970, [21]) nominal size 10 mm nominal size 20 mm
in concrete primarily occurs along the interface of the coarse
 S.R. Kasu et al. / Construction and Building Materials 229 (2019) 116922 3

mixed for another one minute. After that, half the total amount of water required
was added to the dry mixture and mixed for about two minutes. The remaining half
portion of cement and fly ash were then added to the mixture and mixed for one
minute. Lastly, the remaining half portion of the water was added and mixed until
a uniform mixture was obtained. The mix was placed in the beam moulds and
packed using a tamping rod and compacted subsequently by placing a plate vibra-
tory compactor on the mould. The moulds were covered for 24 h, demolded and
submerged in a water curing tank for 28 days.

2.3. Flexural strength determination

For each mix (S10 and S20), a set of five specimens was tested for each mix
using a 30 kN capacity, closed loop servo-hydraulic controlled machine under
four-point bending condition. The test setup consists of a bottom loading platen
with two rollers, a reaction frame and, a jig to hold two linear variable differential
transducers (LVDTs) as shown in Fig. 2. A constant loading rate of 1 MPa/min was
maintained until rupture occurs (as per ASTM C78 [23]). The flexural strength of
the specimen was estimated using the simple beam bending equation.

2.4. Flexural fatigue life measurement

The experimental setup used for measuring the modulus of rupture (flexural
Fig. 1. Aggregate grading curves for S10 and S20. strength) of the concrete beam specimens was used for fatigue testing also. The
tests were carried out in load control mode with a haversine waveform varying
between a minimum stress level of Smin to a maximum stress level of Smax as shown
in Fig. 3. An initial seating load of 0.20 kN (Smin of 0.09 MPa) was applied prior to the
maximum aggregate are given in Table 3. Mixtures with 10 mm and 20 mm nom- application of the actual loading. Since the heaviest loads consume most part of the
inal maximum aggregate size were designated as S10 and S20 mixtures fatigue life. The maximum stress level (Smax) was selected as 80, 85, and 90% of the
respectively. static flexural strength. The selection of stress levels were based on initial trials car-
ried out on some beam specimens with different stress levels (70% and 75%) indi-
2.2. Sample preparation cated that the specimens did not fail (even after 10,00,000 repetitions). The initial
stiffness of the specimen was calculated at the 50th load cycle and the variation
In the experimental investigation, 100 beam specimens of of strain and flexural stiffness with constant stress cycles was recorded. Termina-
100 mm  100 mm  500 mm size were prepared to evaluate the flexural strength tion conditions selected for the test are (i). maximum number of load cycles of
(10 specimens) and flexural fatigue life (90 specimens). The coarse aggregate and 1,000,000, (ii). stiffness reduction by 50% of the initial stiffness and (iii). complete
sand were mixed initially for 30 s to obtain a uniform dry aggregate mix. Half the failure/fracture, whichever reaches first. To investigate the effect of frequency, sep-
quantity of the cementitious material (cement and fly ash) was added next and arate sets of specimens were tested at frequencies of 2, 5, and 10 Hz.

Table 3
Mix Proportions (kg/m3).

Variable Water Cement Fly ash Sand 10 mm/20 mm Superplasticizer

S10 206.86 292.43 157.47 834.91 853.48 0.85
S20 202.86 288.01 155.33 824.20 874.98 0.77

Fig. 2. Four-point bending test setup.

4 S.R. Kasu et al. / Construction and Building Materials 229 (2019) 116922

3.2. Flexural fatigue behavior

3.2.1. S-N plots

Fig. 3. The waveform used in the repeated constant stress fatigue test.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Flexural strength
Flexural strength (average values of five replicates) of the S10
and S20 mixtures measured in four-point bending test are pre-
sented in Table 4. The maximum stress (Smax) to be applied in
the fatigue tests was selected as 80, 85, and 90% of the flexural
strength to simulate the heavy commercial traffic loading to which
the concrete pavements are subjected.
A total of 90 prismatic specimens comprising 45 specimens
each for the two mixtures with different nominal maximum aggre-
gate sizes (10 mm and 20 mm) were used in this study. The tests
were carried out at three different frequencies; 2, 5, and 10 Hz.
These frequency levels can be considered to correspond to the
vehicular speeds on low, medium, and high traffic volume roads
and bridges. Fatigue lives of specimens of S10 and S20 mixtures
are given in Table 5. Since the observed fatigue life had large scat-
ter, geometric mean was used to estimate the average life of the
mix. Arithmetic means are generally not used for the analysis of
fatigue test results as the fatigue life data will have significant out-
liers and will vary logarithmically. The geometric means of flexural
fatigue lives (after removal of the outliers and runouts, [24,25]) are
shown in Fig. 4(a–c). The geometric mean fatigue lives and stress
level relation follows the linear trend.
It can be observed from the SN plots that irrespective of the fre-
quencies at which the specimens were tested, at 90% stress level,
there is no significant difference between the fatigue lives of S10
and S20 samples. However, significant differences are observed
at 80% stress level at which irrespective of the level of frequency,
fatigue lives for S10 sample are higher than those of S20 samples.
This demonstrates that for low-stress levels, concrete with 10 mm
nominal maximum aggregate size performs better in flexural fati-
gue response compared to the concrete mix with 20 mm nominal
maximum aggregate size. It can also be observed from Fig. 4(a–c)
that for samples with larger size (20 mm) aggregates there is not
much change in fatigue life once the stress level reaches 85% or
higher irrespective of the frequency of loading. A similar state-
ment, however, cannot be made for samples with lower coarse

Table 4
Flexural strengths of concrete mixtures.

Mixture Average failure load, N (Std. dev) Average flexural strength, MPa (Std. dev) Flexural stresses selected for different
stress levels, MPa
80% 85% 90%
S10 9452 (5 6 4) 4.254 (0.25) 3.403 3.616 3.828
S20 9309 (2 1 3) 4.189 (0.10) 3.351 3.561 3.770

Table 5
Summary on Fatigue Lives of S10 and S20 Mixtures.

90% Stress Level 85% Stress Level 80% Stress Level

Frequency, Hz S10 S20 S10 S20 S10 S20
2 440 32a 18,753 179c 98a 26,209
2 1144 2263 70,209 1563 1126c 42,273
2 1851 6281 155,009 10,801 104,872 57,185
2 3083 11,745 377,857 77,249 247,907 64,449
2 NAd 19,313 NAd 110337c NAd 146177c
5 1323 62a 276c 199c 1331c 93a
5 8289 137 1760 919 10129c 4225c
5 13,081 3777 723,969 55,649 103,233 13,097
5 88705c 12,089 832,625 184,961 211,073 70,401
5 194817c 14,369 Terminatedb 616961c 218,369 466,945
10 3175 26a 885 51a 498c 9393
10 8849 640 105,153 775c 5253c 40,193
10 12,633 2757 522,627 7861 66,113 456,449
10 20,609 158,977 675,841 187,009 787,969 468,225
10 54,337 16,545 Terminatedb Terminatedb Terminatedb Terminatedb
a
Rejected as the specimen failed at less than 100 cycles.
b
Rejected as the specimen did not show any cracks, even after 1 million cycles; considered as run out, not included in the analysis.
c
Rejected, performing abnormally from the data sets.
d
Rejected, not available due to power failure.
 S.R. Kasu et al. / Construction and Building Materials 229 (2019) 116922
Fig. 4. S-N plots for S10 and S20 mixtures: (a, b, & c) Geometric mean fatigue lives for loading frequencies of 2 Hz, 5 Hz, and 10 Hz respectively.
aggregate sizes (10 mm nominal size). A probable reason for this
could be that as the size of the aggregate is reduced, better packing
of the grains (coarse aggregates) can be attained. This packing of
the grains eventually helps in slowing down the crack propagation.
Moreover, better packing also leads to fewer air voids (or pores)
which are typically the source points for crack nucleation. Thereby,
at lower stress levels, packing density and porosity play an impor-
tant role in crack nucleation and propagation for samples subjected
to flexural fatigue loads. The observation of higher size of coarse
aggregates leading to lower fatigue life irrespective of the loading
frequencies corroborates the above hypothesis.
3.2.2. Effect of stress level and frequency on fatigue life
Two different variables were investigated in this study; stress
level and frequency. The effect of stress level and frequency has
been examined using non-parametric Kaplan-Meir (K-M) survival
analysis on rightly censored data, which eventually provides an
estimate on the reliability of the fatigue lives of the specimens with
a graphical abstract of survival probability. The non-parametric
distribution analysis yields better results and does not require a
fitting distribution for the test data. The K-M plots shown in
Fig. 5 (a-d) are plots between observed life and survival probabil-
ity. The line in the figure appearing to be similar to a staircase in
shape indicates the progression of failure occurrence. The survival
5
probability plots show that S10 mixture has significantly higher
survival probability at 80 and 85% stress levels compared to that
obtained at 90%. At a survival probability of 50%, the fatigue lives
are almost similar for 80 and 85% stress levels for S10 mix. How-
ever, as expected, 20% survival probability is attained at lower fati-
gue life cycles for 85% stress level compared to that obtained for
80% stress level. No such significant effect on survival probability
could be observed for S10 samples with variation in frequencies
(Fig. 5b). Variation in fatigue life with frequencies is noticeable
only when the survival probability is less than 20%.
The K-M lines for S20 samples (Fig. 5c) show that the stress
level influences the fatigue life. However, a different type of behav-
ior is being demonstrated in these S20 samples in comparison to
the S10 samples. For the S20 samples, it is observed that 50% sur-
vival probability is almost the same for 85% and 90% stress levels
compared to 80% stress level. For S10 mix, a similar survival prob-
ability of 50% can be observed for 80 and 85% stress levels. Quite
similar to the observations noted from S10 samples, no significant
effect could be observed in S20 samples with change in frequency
level (Fig. 5d).
Further, the log-rank test was used to test whether the differ-
ence between the survival probabilities of different sets of concrete
specimens tested at three different stress levels (80, 85 and 90%)
are statistically different or not. A similar exercise was done to
6 S.R. Kasu et al. / Construction and Building Materials 229 (2019) 116922

Fig. 5. Kaplan-Meir survival plots: (a) & (b) effect of stress level and frequency for S10 mixtures, (c) & (d) effect of stress level and frequency for S20 mixtures.

evaluate whether the effect of the three different frequencies (2, 5 cycle data against failure probability. The hazard function for log-
and 10 Hz) is significant or not. The null hypothesis of the log-rank normal distribution decreases with increasing life which is prob-
statistic is that there is no difference between the survival curves lematic in understanding the material deterioration, whereas it
of three groups (either three stress levels or three frequency increases with increasing life for Weibull distribution which is
levels). The observed and expected failures are similar if the null practical and imperative to use [26,27]. The 3-parameter Weibull
hypothesis is true. With the involvement of variance and covari- distribution suits well when fatigue life data do have non-zero
ance of observed and expected failures, the test statistic was location parameter [28]. The probability density function (pdf)
approximated as chi-square distribution with a degree of freedom of the Weibull distribution is
2. The critical p-values for log-rank statistic are found by referring

b1
to chi-square tabular forms. The p-values are found to be 0.000 and b tc tc b
f ðtÞ ¼ eð g Þ ð1Þ
0.015 respectively for the mixtures S10 and S20 indicating that g g
stress level affects the fatigue life significantly. A similar statistical
test yielded p-values of 0.468 and 0.422 for frequencies showing Where t is the fatigue life; b is the shape parameter; ƞ is the scale
that the effect of frequency is insignificant. parameter; c is the location parameter.
The parametric estimation can be done by using the method of
3.2.3. Fatigue life distribution maximum likelihood estimates (MLE). The log-likelihood function
The previous section dealt with the observations made based for n failures and their fatigue lives:
on the geometric mean values of fatigue life of two different
X X
b
n n
ti  c
types of mixtures tested at different stress levels and frequencies. K ¼ n lnðbÞ  n b lnðgÞ þ ðb  1Þ ln ðti  cÞ  ln
It is also necessary to evaluate the failure probability of the mix- i¼1 i¼1
g
tures (S10 and S20) with respect to the fatigue life cycles. It ð2Þ
should be noted that these data are scattered in nature and
thereby probabilistic analysis and fitting distribution are desirable The least square estimator (rank regression method) of location
to be established. Lognormal, 2-parameter and 3-parameter Wei- parameter is used and considered as fixed. The Eq. (2) will be
bull distributions are most commonly used to fit the fatigue life reduced to Eq. (3), taking xi = ti  c
 S.R. Kasu et al. / Construction and Building Materials 229 (2019) 116922 7

Table 6 Table 7
Goodness of fit test results for S10 for 3-parameter Weibull distribution. Maximum Likelihood Estimates (MLE) of Distribution Parameters.
i ti F(ti) F(tn+k-i) ith-term Distribution Parameter Value
1 440 0.045734 0.947704 0.201191 S10 S20
2 885 0.078071 0.943298 0.542008
3 1144 0.091417 0.93607 0.857049 3-parameter Weibull Shape/slope, b 0.504 0.507
4 1323 0.099481 0.929788 1.158272 Scale, ƞ 97254.148 37399.477
5 1760 0.116548 0.903026 1.344828 Location/Threshold, ! 216.260 67.604
6 1851 0.119749 0.862105 1.504662 Log-normal Mean, m 10.396 9.480
7 3083 0.155732 0.798479 1.499976 Standard deviation, r 2.340 2.257
8 3175 0.158022 0.777439 1.673787
9 8289 0.248177 0.771681 1.626687
10 8849 0.255515 0.717463 1.664667
Similarly, the solution will be obtained for b; by substituting ƞ
11 12,633 0.298395 0.646214 1.573881
12 13,081 0.302862 0.645717 1.711306 (of Eq. (4)) in Eq. (3) and taking derivative with respect to b. The
13 18,753 0.351889 0.642792 1.72823 derivative of equation will be further equating to zero and solve
14 20,609 0.365591 0.571399 1.668123 for the final solution b.
15 54,337 0.524902 0.56039 1.417531
The goodness of fit measures (Anderson-Darling (AD) [29,30]
16 66,113 0.56039 0.524902 1.367468
17 70,209 0.571399 0.365591 1.116201
tests) demonstrate that the 3-parameter Weibull distribution pro-
18 103,233 0.642792 0.351889 1.021566 vides a better fit to data in comparison to the other distributions.
19 104,872 0.645717 0.302862 0.984404 The AD statistic test makes use of the specific distribution (Weibull
20 105,153 0.646214 0.298395 1.028311 or lognormal) for calculating critical values. The null hypothesis is
21 155,009 0.717463 0.255515 0.857031
that the distribution of test data follows a specific form if the test
22 211,073 0.771681 0.248177 0.780362
23 218,369 0.777439 0.158022 0.635628 statistic AD is smaller than the critical value of 0.757 at 5% signif-
24 247,907 0.798479 0.155732 0.617786 icance level. The regular form of AD statistic can be defined as
25 377,857 0.862105 0.119749 0.450679
26 522,627 0.903026 0.116548 0.384068 AD2 ¼ n  S ð5Þ
27 675,841 0.929788 0.099481 0.313729
28 723,969 0.93607 0.091417 0.296878 Xn
1
29 787,969 0.943298 0.078071 0.265354 S¼ ð2i  1Þ½ln Fðti Þ þ lnð1  Fðtnþ1i ÞÞ ð6Þ
30 832,625 0.947704 0.045734 0.197702 i¼1
n
Ʃ ith term = 30.48937
AD = 30.48937 – 30 = 0.48937
pffiffiffiffiffiffi
X
n
th
Adj. AD = 0. 48937(1 + 0.2 30Þ = 0.507236 S¼ i term ð7Þ
i¼1



b 0:2
X
n X
n
xi Adjusted AD ¼ AD 1 þ pffiffiffi ð8Þ
K ¼ n lnðbÞ  n b lnðgÞ þ ðb  1Þ lnðxi Þ  ln ð3Þ n
i¼1 i¼1
g
Where n is the sample size, i is the order number of the data point, F
Taking the derivative with respect to ƞ: to obtain ƞ, the Eq. (3) (t) is the cumulative distribution function of the specific distribu-
further, be reduced by equating to zero. The MLE solution for ƞ will tion and ti must be ordered fatigue data. The results obtained by
become AD test for S10 mix for Weibull distribution are presented in Table 6.
" #b The analysis was carried out as per the procedure given by Refs. [29]
1 XN
 b and [31].
xi ð4Þ
N i¼1 Fig. 6 shows the 3-parameter Weibull distribution fitting with
the corresponding AD (Eq. (5)) and p-values. Lower AD statistic val-

Fig. 6. Three-parameter Weibull distribution fitting for fatigue life: (a) S10 and (b) S20 mixtures.
8 S.R. Kasu et al. / Construction and Building Materials 229 (2019) 116922
Fig. 7. (a) Probability density and (b) cumulative distribution plots for three-parameter Weibull distribution: S10 and S20 mixtures.
ues of 0.487 and 0.243 (3-parameter Weibull) are obtained com-
pared to the values of 0.595 and 0.311 (lognormal) obtained for
S10 and S20 mixtures respectively.
It can be estimated from Fig. 6 that 50,000 cycles fatigue life has
about 50% failure probability for S10 mix in comparison to the fati-
gue life of 18,000 cycles obtained for S20 mix with similar failure
probability. This also demonstrates that irrespective of the stress
level and or loading frequency, S10 samples have better flexural
fatigue characteristics compared to those of S20 samples. The max-
imum likelihood estimates of the Weibull distribution parameters
are given in Table 7. The slope, scale, and location parameters gov-
ern the distribution characteristics such as the shape of the curve,
reliability, and failure rate respectively. Slope parameter (b), which
is a non-dimensional parameter was found to be 0.504 and 0.507
(less than one) for both the mixtures, indicating a hazard function
which decreases sharply and monotonically and is convex in shape
(Fig. 7a & b). This suggests a high probability of early failure.
It can be noted from the probability density and cumulative dis-
tribution plots presented in Fig. 7a & b, that the failure probability
for S20 mix is higher than that of S10 mix. In other words, the use-
ful fatigue life of S10 mix is higher than that of S20 mix. It also
depicts that minimum and maximum lives of S10 mix are signifi-
cantly higher when compared to the S20 mix. The fatigue behavior
of the mixtures considered in this study is highly sensitive to the
stress level rather than frequency. This might be due to the use
of larger size aggregate which results in a lower surface area for
the development of gel bonds, which is responsible for the lower
strength of concrete and probably more heterogeneity in concrete.
4. Conclusions
In this study, the normal strength concrete prismatic specimens
were tested under haversine cyclic loading and the resulting fati-
gue data of mixtures with two different sizes of aggregate
(10 mm and 20 mm) were used for carrying out probabilistic fati-
gue life analysis. It can be concluded that

Fatigue lives of samples with 10 mm nominal maximum aggre-
gate size (S10) are significantly higher compared to 20 mm
nominal aggregate size (S20) for 80% stress level but are almost
similar for 90% stress level irrespective of the loading frequency.

Stress level influences the fatigue life for both S10 and S20 sam-
ples but not the loading frequency. This has been noted through
the Kaplan-Meir (KM plots) survival probability plots along
with p-value statistics.

3-parameter Weibull distribution fits the failure probability vs.
fatigue life plots better for both S10 and S20 samples in compar-
ison to other distributions such as lognormal. The Anderson-
darling statistic has been used to demonstrate the goodness of
fit of the Weibull distribution.

The distribution characteristic shape parameter (b) value of less
than 1.0 indicates early life failures for the considered stress
levels.

Probability density and cumulative distribution plots depict
that the useful life (minimum and maximum lives) of S10 mix-
ture is relatively higher than that of S20 mixture.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge Late Prof. B.B. Pandey,
Advisor, SRIC, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur for his con-
stant support, motivation, and suggestions during the experimen-
tal study. The authors also would like to thank the reviewers for
their valuable suggestions.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2019.116922.
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