Determining the tensile strength of concrete for wedge splitting specimens based on the fracture extreme theory

Abstract Two theoretical methods were developed to determine the tensile strength ft of concrete using wedge splitting specimens based on nil-stress intensity factor (nil-SIF) criterion and force equilibrium theory, respectively. With the fracture extreme theory (FET), only experimental peak load of one specimen was needed and did not require the measurement of critical crack mouth opening displacement CMODc for calculation. The existing experimental data were utilized to verify the two methods. Results show that the values of ft were insensitive to the initial notched ratios a0/D and agreed well with the experiment data. The influence of the size of the specimen was analyzed, ft was affected by the specimen size when the nil-SIF criterion was adopted. Nevertheless, ft calculated by the force equilibrium theory appeared to be kept a constant when the height of the specimen varied from 200 mm to 600 mm. Finally, the critical effective crack length ac and critical crack tip opening displacement CTODc were obtained and compared using the two methods.