New approach of concrete tensile strength test

The study aims to develop a new approach of concrete tensile strength test characteristic by minimizing the traditional drawbacks such as load eccentricity, stress or strain non-uniformity and stress concentration in traditional test methods and of a distinguished gauge region which undergoes uniform tensile stress so the determination of the tensile stress-strain curve is simplified contrariwise of traditional methods. The elementary configuration of biaxial stress state is normalized into introduced model configuration under the effect of identical internal forces of specific alignment laid within specific compression and tension elements likewise a strut–tie model. Experimental program is considered to investigate the introduced model, flexural and Brazilian splitting tests are conducted to confirm its reliability. The obtained results are quite converged and show that the tensile strength determined by the proposed model is clearly higher than that of the Brazilian test with closer deviation and lower than that of the flexural test. Unique and sudden fracture is observed within assigned gauge length and led to separation of failed specimens without any deformation associated with loading mechanism.