Construction and Building Materials 47 (2013) 662–670

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Construction and Building Materials

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/conbuildmat

Experimental study and analytical formulation of mechanical behavior

of concrete
Xudong Chen, Shengxing Wu ⇑, Jikai Zhou
College of Civil and Transportation Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing 210098, China

h i g h l i g h t s

 Mechanical behavior of normal concrete was tested and analyzed.

 Strain at peak stress increases with an increase in concrete strength.
 Existing expressions relating elastic modulus and strength is discussed.
 A mathematical model was developed for predicting stress–strain curves.
 Suitability of existing models for stress–strain curves is assessed.

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

Article history: An experimental investigation was carried out to generate the mechanical behavior of normal concrete
Received 15 February 2013 cores with a strength range of 10–50 MPa, including the compressive strength, elastic modulus, strain
Received in revised form 22 April 2013 at peak stress and stress–strain relationships. From several formulations for concrete in this study, it
Accepted 4 May 2013
was observed that a conservative estimation of the elastic modulus and strain at peak stress can be
Available online 10 June 2013
obtained from the value of compressive strength. The accuracy of predictions of a number of analytical
models available in the literature is discussed. This paper shows the development of a statistical damage
Keywords:
mechanics model for concrete at uniaxial loading in compression to ultimate failure. This model is formu-
Concrete
Mechanical behavior
lated by using Weibull’s statistical theory of the strength of materials. The body of heterogeneous
Experimental study concrete material is simulated as a continuum comprising a large population of microscopic ‘‘weakest-
Modeling link’’ elements. This model provides a good prediction of experimental results in this study. When
compared other existing models, it gave better prediction.
Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction slabs, and to compute loss of pre-stress in pre-stressed members

Reinforced concrete is widely used to build infrastructures in
many countries. The main constituent materials of reinforced con-
crete structures are plain concrete and steel bars. The concrete is
essential to carry compressive stresses, however, the steel is essen-
tial to transmit tensile stresses. The discussion of instantaneous
deformations of concrete under load is timed from a theoretical
viewpoint because deformations provide indirect information con-
cerning the internal structure as well as the failure mechanism of
concrete [1]. From a practical standpoint, the ultimate strength de-
sign of reinforced concrete elements brought the stress–strain rela-
tionship into focus. Also, a knowledge of the deformability of
concrete is necessary to compute deflections of structures, to com-
pute stresses from observed strains, to design sections of highway
⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 25 83786551; fax: +86 26 83786986.
E-mail address: sxwuhhu@hotmail.com (S. Wu).
[2,3].
The stress–strain curves of concrete are dependent on two ma-
jor parameters; testing conditions and concrete characteristics.
Testing conditions include variables such as stiffness of testing ma-
chine [4–6], shape and size of the specimen [7,8], strain rate [9–
11], type of strain gauge and gauge length [6,12]. Concrete charac-
teristics depend on many interrelated variables such as water–ce-
ment ratio [13,14], the mechanical and physical properties of the
cement [15,16] and aggregate [17,18], and the age of the specimen
when tested [19,20]. The evaluation of such parameters based on
one series of test results may not be accurate for another series
of experiments under different conditions. The nonlinear behavior
of the stress–strain relation of concrete is well known. Many inves-
tigators have tried to represent the relationship by standard math-
ematical curves, e.g., a parabola, hyperbola, ellipse, cubic parabola,
or combinations like parabola with a straight line or a sine wave
with a cubic parabola and so on [21,22]. Some researchers have
approximated the stress–strain curve into a triangle, a rectangle

0950-0618/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2013.05.041
 X. Chen et al. / Construction and Building Materials 47 (2013) 662–670
or a trapezium [23]. The above relationships may have the advan-
tage of simplifying the computation of ultimate moment of rein-
forced concrete sections. However, they can be classified only as
empirical methods since the assumed stress distribution does not
represent an observed phenomenon [24]. Many theoretical at-
tempts have also been devoted to the modeling of the constitutive
behavior of concrete, such as the fracture mechanism [25] and
damage mechanics theory [26]. In particular, the fracture mecha-
nisms is more practical for existing concentrated cracks while
damage mechanics theory is more suitable for crack initiation,
growth, and coalescence in the case of distributed microcracks.
Moreover, composite theory [27], micromechanics [28], and prob-
abilistic characterizations [29] can be incorporated into both the
fracture and damage mechanics approaches. The damage mechan-
ics theory was utilized in this paper.
The core specimens used for this investigation have several dis-
tinct advantages over the cast specimens which are conventionally
used in concrete technology. When concrete is cast a weak zone
near the top surface is formed due to migration of paste and water
during the compaction and setting of concrete. Although this
weakness in concrete test specimens was noted as early as 1963
[30], however this physical phenomenon has not always been
appreciated when interpreting observed modes of fracture in test
specimens [31]. In any investigation into the study of concrete
behavior the presence of this weak layer will lead to an unknown
extent obscuring the resulting conclusions. The uncertainty arising
from such a layer was, for this study, eliminated by cutting the thin
layer of mortar placing near the top surface. This thin layer of mor-
tar exhibits different properties than the interior concrete. Thus
strain gauge performance on such surfaces could be misleading,
especially when strains are measured because of the widely differ-
ing specific values of mortar and concrete. Davies [30] has con-
cluded that such differences are insignificant. However, the
authors find this investigation conclusive and are of the opinion
that further experimentation is necessary before a satisfactory con-
clusion on this subject can be formulated. Another advantage of
such specimens is that the development of cracking can be contin-
uously observed in the course of testing under constant strain rate.
In this paper, a statistical damage constitutive model for the
compressive behavior of cored concrete is presented. To evaluate
the adequacy of the proposed model equation, it was analyzed
and compared with experimental results obtained from this study.
The accuracy of predictions of a number of analytical models avail-
able in the literature is also discussed.
2. Experimental study and results
2.1. Mix proportions and specimens
The tests covered eight types of concrete. Mixture proportions, as listed in Ta-
ble 1, were selected so as to obtain concretes of nominal classes ranging from
10 MPa to 50 MPa. All concrete mixes were batched with siliceous river aggregate,
characterized by continuous size curves, with a maximum aggregate size of 20 mm
Table 1
Mix proportions and some properties of concrete mixtures.
Mix Mix proportions Type of Portland Maximum aggregate
(C:W:S:A) cement size (mm)
Mix1 1:0.7:2.7:4.6 325 20
Mix2 1:0.65:2.6:3.9 325 20
Mix3 1:0.7:2.7:4.6 425 20
Mix4 1:0.48:1.5:3.1 425 20
Mix5 1:0.6:2.2:3.7 425 20
Mix6 1:0.4:1.1:2.5 425 20
Mix7 1:0.42:1.8:5.2 425 10
Mix8 1:0.36:1.4:5.2 425 10
663
in six cases and 10 mm in the two remaining cases. 200  200  550 mm concrete
beams were cast. To ensure adequate curing, the beam specimens after demoulding
were wrapped under a wet hessian cloth, wetted continuously by sprinkling water.
The cores, which are presented in this study, with diameter d of 74 mm were
drilled from 200  200  550 mm concrete beams, cast and wet air-cured under
laboratory conditions until being tested at the age of 60 days. Testing samples were
cored at the 60 days of curing and the compressive strength tests were performed
on all cores at the age of 60 days.
2.2. Compression test
Compressive strength test was performed on all the cores with diameter of
74 mm. The cores were cut to obtain a length/diameter (l/d) of 2. The maximum
parallel error between the two end-faces was always less than 0.1°. The load was
applied through steel plates, one of them pivoting. Longitudinal strains were mea-
sured by means of three strain gauges parallel to the direction of the applied load
and centered at mid-height of the specimens. The uniaxial compressive load was
applied using a universal testing machine (UTM, Closed-Loop Servo-Hydraulic Test-
ing machine) with a capacity of 1000 kN. Loading was applied at a rate of 0.003 m
per second. Failure occurred between 3 and 5 min after initial loading.
2.3. Test results and discussion
The strength test results are summarized in Table 2. Fig. 1 shows the stress–
strain diagrams of concrete cores. The stress–strain curve of a concrete core devi-
ates gradually from the straight line mainly because of the progressive propagation
of internal cracking in the specimen. For the concrete with higher strength, the
ascending part of the stress–strain curve is more linear than for the lower strength
concrete. The unstable descending parts of the curves were not measurable with the
experimental setup used.
Tables 3 and 4 show the expressions of some codes given by several authors to
predict the values of elastic modulus and strain at peak stress. The elastic modulus
in this paper was measured as the chord modulus according to ASTM C469 [46].
Such predictions are plotted together with the mean experimental results in Figs. 2
and 3, for elastic modulus and strain at peak stress, respectively. It can be seen from
Fig. 2 that the experimental relationship between elastic modulus and compressive
strength is beneath the majority of the code provisions, but above the ACI 318 [35].
Fig. 3 shows the relationship between strain at peak stress and compressive
strength. From the results of this limited study, the formulations by Nicolo et al.
[45] seems to give the best estimation for strain at peak stress.
3. Assessment of existing models for stress–strain curves
The compressive stress–strain behavior of concrete is a signifi-
cant issue in the flexural analysis of reinforced concrete beams and
columns. Some researchers have attempted to represent the
stress–strain relationship of concrete in compression. The work
of the researchers is presented in the following sections.
Barnard [47] proposed the following second order parabola to
represent the stress–strain relationship of concrete in
compression.
"     #
e e 2
r ¼ rp 2  ð1Þ
ep ep
where r is the stress at any strain e, and rp is the compressive strain
or peak stress at a strain ep.Desayi and Krishnan [48] proposed the
following quotient of two polynomials to represent the stress–
strain relationship of concrete in compression.
Eit e
r¼  2 ð2Þ
1 þ eep
where Eit is the initial tangent modulus such that Eit = 2rp/ep.
Baldwin and North [49] proposed the following quotient of two-
second order polynomials to represent the stress–strain relation-
ship of concrete in compression.
2    2 3
e e
6 A ep þ B ep 7
r ¼ rp 4    2 5 ð3Þ
e e
1 þ C ep þ D ep
664 X. Chen et al. / Construction and Building Materials 47 (2013) 662–670

Table 2 Table 3
Summary of test results. Formulations to predict elastic modulus from compressive strength.

Mix type Specimen No. Test (MPa) Mean (MPa) S.D. (MPa) References Elastic modulus
pffiffiffiffi
Mix1 1 10.69 10.27 0.84 EHE [32] E ¼ 10000  3 fc
2 10.67 pffiffiffiffi
NBR 6118 [33] E ¼ 5600  fc
3 9.82 qffiffiffiffi
CEB [34] 3 fc
4 9.43 E ¼ 21:5  10
pffiffiffiffi
5 9.44 ACI 318 [35] E ¼ 43  q1:5 fc  106a
c 
pffiffiffiffi
Mix2 6 17.29 16.44 0.72 Hueste et al. [36] E ¼ 5230  fc
7 16.85 Norwegian code [37] E = 9.5  (fc)0.3
pffiffiffiffi
8 16.63 Gardner and Zao [38] E ¼ 9  3 fc
9 15.62
10 15.78 Note: fc is the compressive strength; qc is the concrete density; and a is the air
content.
Mix3 11 19.73 18.67 0.56
12 18.76
13 18.53
14 18.52 2    2 3
15 18.28 A e þ ðD  1Þ e
r ¼ rp 6 7
e p ep
Mix4 16 30.37 27.48 2.37 4    2 5 ð4Þ
e
1 þ ðA  1Þ ep þ D epe
17 27.82
18 26.05
19 25.30 Popovics [50] shown that most of the stress–strain functions
20 30.22
have a similar shape regardless of concrete strength. Such an equa-
Mix5 21 33.27 32.50 3.33 tion is shown as following:
22 25.87
23 25.96 e m
r ¼ rp ð5Þ
24 25.02 ep m  1 þ ðe=ep Þm
25 27.33
Mix6 26 41.16 35.71 3.88 m ¼ 2:76  105 rp þ 1:0 ð6Þ
27 35.07
28 37.97 Cook and Chindaprasirt [51] proposed the following mathemat-
29 32.18
ical model to describe the compressive stress–strain behavior of
30 32.14
concrete.
Mix7 31 43.48 41.93 1.08 "
32 42.61
 k1 #
E0 e 1 e
33 41.52 r¼  k ð1  WÞ þ E0 eW 1  ð7Þ
1 e k ep
34 41.09 1 þ k1 ep
35 40.94
Mix8 36 49.93 48.32 1.57 where E0 is initial elastic modulus, k is curvature of the stress–strain
37 48.12 curve, W is a factor in the stress–strain curve approximation. The
38 48.71
above parameters could be obtained as follows:
39 49.05
"  k #
40 45.76
1 e
W ¼ exp  ð8Þ
k ep

ep ¼ 0:001755 þ 8:74  106 rp ð9Þ

k ¼ 1:0 þ 0:009r1:551
p ð10Þ

Carreira and Chu [41] proposed the following mathematical

expression to represent the stress–strain relationship for concrete
in compression.
 
b eep rp
r¼  b ð11Þ
b  1 þ eep

h r p i3
b¼ þ 1:55 ð12Þ
32:4
Almusallam and Alsayed [52] proposed a simple mathematical
model that can represent the stress–strain spectrum of concrete.
ðK  K p Þe
Fig. 1. Stress–strain curves of various concrete. r¼n h in o1=n þ K p e ð13Þ
ðKK p Þe
1þ r0

Boundary conditions yield three independent equations with four where K is the initial slope of the stress–strain curve, r0 is a refer-
unknown constants A, B, C and D. Thus, the number of unknowns ence stress and n is a curve-shape parameter. The parameters can
can be reduced to two constants, be expressed as follows:
 X. Chen et al. / Construction and Building Materials 47 (2013) 662–670 665

Table 4 Tasnimi [53] presents a series of compressive tests on concrete

Formulations to predict strain at peak stress from compressive strength. cylinders in order to develop a stress–strain model concrete under
References Strain at peak stress axial compressive load. A mathematical representing the entire
Liebenberg [39] ep = (0.0546 + 0.003713  fc)  102 range of concrete under uniaxial stress is developed as follows:
Tadros [40] ep = (1.6 + 0.01  fc)  103  4  3  
Carreira and Chu [41] ep = 0.71  105  fc + 0.00168 r e e e
¼ ð2c  3Þ þ ð4  3cÞ þc ð21Þ
Ahmad and Shah [42] ep = 1.65  105  fc + 0.001648 rp ep ep ep
Saenz [43] ep = 1.491  105  fc + 0.00195
Lee [44] ep = fc/(46.886 + 2.6  fc) where c is a constant related to the tangential modulus of elasticity.
Nicolo et al. [45] ep = 0.00076 + [(0.626  fc - 4.33)  107]0.5
Eitm ep
where ep is the strain at peak stress. c¼ ð22Þ
rp
!
r2:8
p
Eitm ¼ 2:25 ln þ 0:05rp ð23Þ
q0:2
c
 
5
ep ¼ 26:73r0:5
p þ 114:78  10 ð24Þ

Xiao et al. [54] proposed the following analytical expression for

the uniaxial compression behavior of normal concrete.
8    2  3
> e þ ð3  2aÞ e þ ða  2Þ e ; e < ep
r <a ep ep ep for
¼ ð25Þ
rp >: ð e= ep Þ
2 ; for e  ep
bðe=ep 1Þ þðe=ep Þ

where a and b are constants to be determined. The smaller the a va-

lue is, the smaller is the proportion of the plastic deformation at the
peak stress with respect to the total deformation. The parameter b is
related to the area under the descending portion of the stress–strain
curve.
A cross comparison between the experimental curve and those
Fig. 2. Relationship between the elastic modulus and compressive strength for obtained by using the different theoretical models analyzed was
concrete. completed. The comparison highlights that every model agrees
well with their respective experimental data, and less well with
the experimental data obtained by other authors [55], because
each proposed equation was obtained by using a regression analy-
sis to interpolate their own experimental data. The experimental
stress–strain curves obtained from this study are compared with
the various model predictions in Figs. 4–12. These results shows
that the theoretical curves of Tasnimi [53] have a totally different
shape from those experimental observed. The stress–strain rela-
tionships proposed by Barnard [47], Baldwin and North [49], De-
sayi and Krishnan [48] and Cook and Chindaprasirt [51]
overestimate the region near to the peak stress, but show a some-
what similar slope of experimental curves. Carreira and Chu [41]
model give an adequate interpretation of the phenomenon, but
only for limited ranges of strengths. The model proposed by Xiao
et al. [54], on the other hand, generally agrees well with the exper-
imental curves.

4. Development of the stress–strain curve

Fig. 3. Relationship between the strain at peak stress and compressive strength for
concrete.
Continuous damage model defines damage as the density of de-
ln 2 fects/discontinuities on a cross section in a given orientation,
n¼   ð14Þ
ln rr10  KKp p
K
amplified by their stress-raising effects [56]. In general, damage
is represented by tensors due to its directional nature [57]. When
where the weighted fractional loss of an area of a cross section is the same
"     # regardless of the orientation of the cross section, then damage is
e1 e1 2
r1 ¼ rp 2  ð15Þ isotropic and is described by a scalar variable D taking values be-
e0 e0 tween 0 and 1. Damage is considered to be isotropic in this paper.
The concept of effective stress, along with the principle of strain
r0 equivalence [56], may be used to derive the constitutive law for
e1 ¼ ð16Þ
K  Kp a damaged material.
r0 ¼ 5:6 þ 1:02rp  K p e0 ð17Þ In the framework of small deformation, total strain e can be di-
K p ¼ 5470  375rp ð18Þ vided as
pffiffiffiffiffiffi
K ¼ 3320 rp þ 6900 ð19Þ e ¼ ee þ ev ð26Þ
e0 ¼ ð0:2rp þ 13:06Þ  104 ð20Þ
where ee and ev is elastic and visco-plastic strains, respectively.
666 X. Chen et al. / Construction and Building Materials 47 (2013) 662–670

Fig. 4. Comparison of Barnard model with test data. Fig. 7. Comparison of Popovics model with test data.

Fig. 5. Comparison of Desayi and Krishnan model with test data.

Fig. 8. Comparison of Cook and Chindaprasirt model with test data.

Fig. 6. Comparison of Baldwin and North model with test data.

Fig. 9. Comparison of Carreira and Chu model with test data.

For the iso-thermal case, if the elastic deformation is assumed

to be uncoupled with strain hardening, the Helmholtz free poten-
tial energy W can be represented as follows:
Wðe; q; DÞ ¼ we ðee ; DÞ þ wp ðg; ev Þ
where we is the elastic part of Helmholtz specific free energy; wp is
the plastic part of Helmholtz specific free energy; D is internal state
variable representing damage, which is a scalar variable; and g is
ð27Þ internal variable representing ductility.
 X. Chen et al. / Construction and Building Materials 47 (2013) 662–670 667

Fig. 10. Comparison of Almusallam and Alsayed model with test data. Fig. 12. Comparison of Xiao et al. model with test data.

Fig. 13. Comparison of proposed model with test data.

Fig. 11. Comparison of Tasnimi model with test data.

we can be defined by the strain equivalent assumption as small in dimension compared with the whole structure of the con-
follows:
crete. Hence a distinct influence of individual defects may be ig-
1 nored in such a case, and then the mesoscopic element can be
we ðee ; DÞ ¼ ð1  DÞEe2e ð28Þ
2 considered as a particle within a framework of continuous
mechanics theory. To proceed in this way, we have the possibility
Based on the second law of thermodynamics, the damage and
of exploring the damaging (or failure) behavior of a concrete on the
plastic deformation of materials are irreversible thermodynamic
basis of the properties of those mesoscopic elements involved [59–
processes. Therefore, the inequality of Clausius-Duheim must be
61]. Therefore, if the defects existing in a concrete are considered
satisfied, as follows:
to be randomly induced during the loading phase, then the damage
re  W  0 ð29Þ or failure with respect to individual mesoscopic elements is also
viewed to be random, more precisely, the strength level of meso-
So, the following equation can be deduced:
scopic elements may be stochastically distributed.
@we Next, before presenting the equation describing an evolutionary
r¼ ¼ ð1  DÞEðe  ev Þ ð30Þ
condition of the damage, the major assumptions are given as fol-
@ ee
lows [62].
Eq. (30) is an elastic–plastic damage constitutive model. When
D = 0, ev obeys the plastic mechanics law and Eq. (30) changes into (1) In terms of each mescoscopic element prior to failure, it
the classic damage model [58] exhibits linear-elasticity, whose stress–strain relationship
r ¼ Eð1  DÞe ð31Þ obeys Hooke’s law.
(2) The strength level F of the mescoscopic elements satisfies
where E is the elastic modulus, e is the total strain, and r the stress the Weibull distribution function [63], whose probability
of the material. density P(F) can be formulated by
Concrete is assumed to be composed of numerous elements,
which is called the mesoscopic elements. As for these elements  m1   m 
m F F
themselves, suppose that they are relatively large enough to con- PðFÞ ¼ exp  ð32Þ
F0 F0 F0
tain many defects and, on the other hand, they are adequately
668 X. Chen et al. / Construction and Building Materials 47 (2013) 662–670

in which m is the shape parameter denoting the degree of material statistical variations in mechanical properties of concrete elements,
homogeneity, and F0 is the scale parameter associated with the Eq. (35) can also be regarded as a statistical evolution of the
strength of concrete elements. damage.
It is noteworthy that because of the intrinsic complexity with We then take the effects of the damage threshold on the dam-
respect to deformation mechanics of concrete, difficulties arise in age evolution, and Eq. (35) becomes:
attempting to apply any simple theory to accounting flexibly for 8 h   i
all statistical aspects of concrete deformation [64]. Here, a Weibull
< 1  exp  F m F  0
D¼ F0 ð36Þ
distribution given by Eq. (32) is, by convention, adopted to describe :0 F < 0
the strength distribution due to its widespread acceptance regard-
ing concrete properties [65–67]. As shown in Eq. (36), F < 0 and F P 0 correspond to intact (undam-
It is timely to explore now the presentation of damage evolu- aged) states and damaged states, respectively, in which F = 0 is the
tion equation incorporating statistical considerations. The damage exact damage threshold.
process of a concrete in loading conditions can be considered to be The Mohr–Coulomb failure criterion may be expressed as:
continuously evolving, progressively accumulating failure behavior
of the mesoscopic elements. Assuming that Nf represents the quan- F¼r
~ 1 ð1 þ sin uÞ  r
~ 3 ð1  sin uÞ ¼ 2c cos u ð37Þ
tities of failed mesoscopic elements and N represents the total where r ~ 1 and r
~ 3 are effective stress; c and / are cohesion and inter-
quantities of mesoscopic elements, the extent of damage may be nal friction angle.Substituting fr frg
~ g ¼ ð1DÞ into Eq. (37) leads to:
assessed by the ratio of Nf to N. This implies that the damage var-
r1 r3
iable D mentioned previously can also be measured in the form of F¼ ð1 þ sin uÞ  ð1  sin uÞ ð38Þ
such ratio, which is expressed by Eq. (33) presented below [68,69]: 1D 1D
Meanwhile, there exists:
Nf
D¼ ð33Þ
N 1 1
e1 ¼ ðr~ 1  2lr~ 3 Þ ¼ ðr1  2lr3 Þ ð39Þ
To employ Eq. (33), the right-hand side of it was determined explic- E ð1  DÞE
itly. In the case where the value of the strength of mesoscopic ele- where l is the Poisson’s ratio.
ments changes from F to F + dF, the number of failed mesoscopic Combing Eqs. (38) and (39) yields the following expression:
elements can be obtained as NP(F)dF. As a consequence, the math-
ematical denotation of the number of failed mesoscopic elements Ee1 ½r1 ð1 þ sin uÞ  r3 ð1  sin uÞ
F¼ ð40Þ
Nf can be derived when the strength value ranges between 0 and F: r1  2lr3
Z   m 

F
F For the uniaxial tests, the above expression can be rewritten as:
Nf ¼ NPðyÞdy ¼ N 1  exp  ð34Þ
0 F0 F ¼ Ee1 ð1 þ sin uÞ ð41Þ
From Eqs. (33) and (34), it follows that Eq. (39), should satisfy the following boundary conditions:
  m  (1) When e1 = 0, r1 = 0.
F
D ¼ 1  exp  ð35Þ (2) When e1 = 0, ddre11 ¼ E.
F0
(3) When e1 = ep, r1 = rp.
Eq. (35) manifests that a correlation is found between the damage (4) When e1 = ep, ddre11 ¼ 0.
variable D (describing the state of concrete damage) and the
element strength F (satisfying a statistical distribution P(F) of the where ep is strain at which the stress is equal to a peak stress rp.
Weibull form with two parameters m and F0). Thus, by introducing Differentiating Eq. (39), we can obtain the following expression:

Table 5
Corrlation coefficient (R2) and standard error (S) for concrete specimens.

Model Mix1 Mix2 Mix3 Mix4 Mix5 Mix6 Mix7 Mix8

Barnard [47] R2 0.995 0.999 0.996 0.990 0.999 0.980 0.997 0.996
S 0.219 0.155 0.670 0.453 0.451 1.211 1.747 2.257
Desayi and Krishnan [48] R2 0.997 0.998 0.999 0.996 0.994 0.998 0.988 0.989
S 0.385 0.558 0.407 1.121 1.247 2.082 3.097 3.550
Baldwin and North [49] R2 0.986 0.980 0.979 0.973 0.971 0.987 0.971 0.971
S 0.381 0.738 0.798 1.387 1.366 1.089 2.264 2.882
Popovics [50] R2 0.945 0.992 0.930 0.947 0.954 0.954 0.968 0.955
S 1.269 0.677 3.340 3.583 4.090 4.318 5.447 6.467
Cook and Chindaprasirt [51] R2 0.999 0.989 0.992 0.999 0.979 0.998 0.998 0.998
S 1.399 0.489 1.080 3.078 3.965 4.323 9.066 9.911
Carreira and Chu [41] R2 0.989 0.989 0.996 0.996 0.997 0.999 0.997 0.989
S 0.950 1.242 0.666 1.084 0.923 0.797 1.183 2.636
Almusallam and Alsayed [52] R2 0.991 0.999 0.997 0.999 0.998 0.999 0.998 0.999
S 0.461 0.293 0.619 0.565 0.840 0.719 1.238 0.618
Tasnimi [53] R2 0.767 0.789 0.767 0.814 0.822 0.780 0.844 0.843
S 3.267 5.249 6.532 7.437 8.457 9.649 11.730 12.996
Xiao et al. [54] R2 0.997 0.973 0.969 0.982 0.968 0.989 0.993 0.995
S 0.264 0.306 0.446 0.774 0.824 1.653 2.447 2.512
This paper R2 0.998 0.997 0.987 0.999 0.998 0.998 0.985 0.999
S 0.184 0.133 0.163 0.209 0.362 0.527 0.240 0.694
 X. Chen et al. / Construction and Building Materials 47 (2013) 662–670
  m 
( "  m1 # )
@ r1 F F 1 @F
¼ E exp  1 þ e1 m ð42Þ
@ e1 F0 F0 F 0 @ e1
Obviously, Eqs. (42) satisfy the conditions of (1) and (2).When the
boundaries conditions (3) and (4) are substituted into Eq. (42),
the following formulate can be obtained.
  m 
F
rp ¼ Eep exp  ð43Þ
F0
" Acknowledgement
 m1 #
Fp 1
1 þ ep m Eð1 þ sin uÞ ¼ 0 ð44Þ
F0 F0
where Fp = Eep(1 + sin /).
Solving Eqs. (43) and (44), the expressions of m and F0 can be
written as:
1
m¼ r ð45Þ
ln epp
1 [1] Youssef MA, Moftah M. General stress–strain relationship for concrete at
F 0 ¼ ðmF p Þm ð46Þ
and F0 are calculated by experimental data, the modified statis-
tical constitutive model for concrete can be determined by Eqs.
(35), (41), (45), and (46). A comparison of stress–strain curves gen-
erated by the present analytical model with those obtained in the
present experimental study is shown in Fig. 13, which show a very
close match between the analytical and experimental curves. The
correlation coefficient (R2) and standard errors (S) of the existing
models and the model proposed in this paper are shown in Table 5.
The standard errors (S) between the experimental and predicted
results of the model proposed in this paper are lower than that
of the existing models, indicating very good fits. The correlation
coefficient (R2) is above 0.98 also indicates good correlation be-
tween the model in this paper and corresponding experimental
data. Through this study, we can find that, it is more definite to
see the strength of concrete element as random variable instead
of the axial strain. Meanwhile, the statistical mechanics damage
model includes the Mohr–Coulomb failure criterion, which is
widely applied in classic plastic theory. In addition, the new model
is derived from three-dimensional general stress state, so the
three-dimensional form of the model could be deduced and ob-
tained. One limitation of this model is that it does not take into ac-
count the effect of rate of stressing (or rate of straining) on the
stress–strain relation. However, most of the well-known proposed
equations ignore it and probably there is no ultimate load theory
which has taken it into account. Experimental evidence [70,71]
indicates this effect on the failure load as well as on the stress–
strain curve. Hence, for an accurate investigation of the ultimate
moment of sections, the time element should also be considered.
5. Conclusions
In this study, the mechanical property of concrete cores with
compressive strength ranging from 10 MPa to 50 MPa was investi-
gated. Strain at peak stress increases with an increase in concrete
strength. Experimental investigation and analytical study were
performed to develop a mathematical model for the prediction of
stress–strain curves of concrete cores under compressive load.
The main model parameters were determined analytically and
only a few parameters from both statistical damage mechanics
and experimental data were obtained. The model was checked
against experimental results and provided good agreement with
measured values. It also gave better predictions than some of the
models available in the literature.
Among the existing nine analytical models tested in light of the
present test data, Xiao et al. model produced the best outcome, fol-
669
lowed by that proposed by Carreira and Chu model. However, the
latter is relatively complex; the strain at peak stress was assumed
to be a function of concrete strength.
A further publication is in preparation for further developing
this statistical damage mechanics model to simulate the micro-
crack growth process within a body of concrete material at multi-
ple cyclic loading in uniaxial compression.
The authors are grateful to the National Natural Science Foun-
dation of China (Grant No. 51178162) and the Fundamental Re-
search Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. 2011B11047)
for the financial support.
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