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Impact Testing of Concrete Using a
Drop-weight Impact Machine
ACCELEROMETERS
N. Banthia is Attache de Recherche, Department of Civil Engineering,
Laval University, Ste-Foy. Quebec, G1K7P4, Canada. S. Mindess is The accelerometers (Fig. 1) mounted along the length of
Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, University of British Colum- the beam were piezoelectric sensors with a resonant fre-
bia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T1 WS, Canada. A. Bentur is Profes- quency of 45 kHz. With a resolution of 0.01 g, the
sor, Building Research Station, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology,
Technion City, Haifa 32000, Israel. M. Pigeon is Professor, Department accelerometers can read up to • 500 g and have an over-
of Civil Engineering, Laval University, Ste-Foy, Quebec, GIK7P4, Canada. load protection of up to 5000 g (where g is Earth's gravita-
Original manuscript submitted: September 25, 198Z Final manuscript tional acceleration). The calibration for the accelerometers
received: June 2, 1988. was supplied by the manufacturer.
E x p e r i m e n t a l M e c h a n i c s ~ 63
PHOTOCELL ASSEMBLY sion in a hydraulically loaded universal testing machine.
The horizontal load channel of the support anvil was
The photocell assembly consists of a strip of metal calibrated by applying a horizontal static load on the
with holes punched in it, that runs parallel to the anvil using a lower range universal testing machine, Load
columns of the machine (Fig. I) and a photocell was applied in small steps up to about 70 percent of the
mounted on the hammer that slides along the strip.
elastic capacity followed by an unloading in steps to check
As soon as the photocell reaches a hole in the strip
for any hysteresis. Although, the steel in the tup and the
(Fig. 4), the beam of light falls on the photocell
support anvil was to be loaded dynamically in an actual
through the hole registering an output. The use of
test, the static calibration was assumed to be reasonable.
the photocell assembly is made for two purposes:
first, for the triggering of the data-acquisition sys-
tem and second, for the determination of the hammer CALIBRATION OF THE HAMMER ACCELERATION
acceleration as it fails under gravity. The hammer, once AS mentioned earlier, the photocell assembly sent out a
released, passes a hole in the strip before hitting the voltage signal, in the form of a spike, whenever it inter-
specimen. This interception of the hole triggers the data- cepted a hole in the metal strip. A typical output from the
acquisition system (Fig. I). The use of the photocell for photoccU assembly is shown in Fig. 5. The data from the
the determination of the hammer acceleration is described photocell assembly indicated the time required by the
below. hammer to travel the distances between the successive
holes.
Calibration If it can be assumed that the downward acceleration of
the hammer (ah) is constant, and if we know the time
CALIBRATION OF THE TUP AND THE SUPPORT ANVIL required by the hammer under a free fall to travel two
adjacent segments of length S, and $2 (Fig. 5) then from
The tup and the vertical-load channel of the support
anvil were calibrated b y subjecting them to static compres- the laws of motion, the acceleration of the hammer (t/h)
may be obtained as follows. Between the first and second
hole,
$2 = V2At2 + 89 (2)
Also
L _J
I (a)
9 @
(a) I T2
+JI-
STRAIN GAUGIrS EXCITATION
TYPE: SON DEO (b)
[.m
RESISTANCE : Sw _e 0 . 3 % Excilotion [xcitotion
SAGE FACTOR: 2.OF ~" 0.5%
TEMPERATURE COEFFIClENT:~ O.t% (b) Ic)
Fig. 2--The tup and its circuit Fig. 3--The support anvil and its circuit
64 9 March 1989
II2 = II1 + ahAt~ (3) pillers after repeated use yielded accelerations as low as
8.60 m/s 2.
Solving for ah we have
2($2Atl - S, Atz) Acquisition Storage and Retrieval of Data
ah (4)
A t x A t 2 ( A t l + At2) The five-channel data-acquisition system was triggered
by the freely falling hammer itself during each test. Once
If the holes are equally spaced (as in the case of this triggered, the data-acquisition system acquired the data
study), i.e., $1 = $2 = S, then from the tup, the support anvil (only one reaction chan-
2S(At~ - AG) (5) nel connected at a time), and the three accelerometers.
ah = At, At2(At~ + At2) The data-acquisition system, based on an IBM PC,
deposited the time-base data thus acquired on a floppy
It is worth mentioning here that the acceleration of the disk which was eventually transferred to a mainframe
hammer, as obtained by using eq (5), was always found computer and analyzed. During each test the time-base
data were acquired for a preselected length of time
to be less than Earth's gravitational acceleration of 9.81
m/s 2. The friction between the columns of the machine depending on the expected duration of the impact. While
the time required to fail a conventionally reinforced con-
and the hammer was thought to be the reason behind this
discrepancy. An acceleration test done right after cleaning crete beam was about 150 millisecond, the corresponding
the pillers with acetone resulted in a value of hammer time for a plain concrete beam was only about 15 milli-
second. The voltage signals were converted to load and
acceleration of 9.60 m/s 2. On the other hand, unclean
acceleration values using the calibration curves described
above.
Z>--7 Q~
Light
source Holes
fqJ ,,o,o
cell consumed up to failure is also sometimes called the
'toughness' or simply the fracture energy. The computa-
tion of the two may be accomplished as follows.
Experimental Mechanics 9 65
e 2 D1
P~(t)6Uo = Jo OAli (x,t) ~u(x)dx P,(t) = -~ oA [ ~ (U2o(t) + U~(t) + Uo(t)i/,(t))
and
Pb(t) = P t ( t ) - A o i i o ( t ) re 8h3 j]
t--~- + 3t
-j 2
(13)
66 9 March 1989
Mo(t) and Me o(t) are the same. Or, in other words, the the form of elastic strains and vibrations. Since the strain
placement of Pb(t) on the beam [Fig. 7(b)] results in the energy or the vibrational energy in the machine may never
true equivalent static system. The peak bending load, be determined, eq (15) may not be used to determine the
therefore, is the peak value of the generalized load. energy received by t h e beam from the hammer at any
time t. Moreover, a major portion of the energy received
A CHECK by the beam appears as kinetic energy which is of little
concern to us. The energy that does concern us is the
The instrumentation in the support may be used to bending energy [Eb(t)], or the energy given by the area
check the validity of the above analysis. Figure 8 presents under the generalized bending load [Pb(t)] versus the
a comparison between the experimental support load and load-point deflection [Uo(t)] curve (Fig. 10).
the evaluated support reaction as computed using eq (11). t
It can be noted that they reasonably agree with each Eb(t) = IO Pb(t)duo (16)
other. The other significant feature of Fig. 8 is the lag of
about 0.4 millisecond between the evaluated and the The deflection at the load point, uo(t), may be ob-
measured reaction. The finite time taken by the stress tained by double integration of the extrapolated accelera-
waves to travel the distance from the point of impact to tion at the load point [Uo(t)].
the support may, to some extent, explain this lag. t t
Figure 9 presents the measured horizontal reaction. It Uo(t) = Io Io tio(t) dtdt (17)
can be seen that the horizontal reaction is close to zero at
all times indicating the simply supported nature of the At the point of failure (Fig. 10), the beam stops receiving
beam. energy from the hammer (tup load falls to zero) and the
area under the Pb(t) versus the LPD [Uo(t)] curve [eq
THE FRACTURE ENERGY (16)] represents the fracture energy or the energy required
to create two new fracture surfaces. At this point, a plain-
As soon as the hammer hits the beam, a sudden transfer
of energy from the hammer to the beam occurs. The
hammer velocity decreases due to the obstacle in its path.
At any time t during the impact, if I P , ( t ) d t represents
the impulse acting against the hammer, the kinetic energy 2,0
lost by the hammer AE(t) may be obtained from the
impulse-momentum relationships,7
1,5
A E ( t ) = "~-mh
1 [2ahh - ( 2x/~d~hh- 1 I P ' ( t ) d t ) 2]
mh
z
(15)
1,0
where m h is the mass of the hammer and h is the height _l
of its drop.
The energy lost by the hammer [eq (15)] is partly trans-
0,5
ferred to the beam and partly stays within the machine in
J
0 2 4 6
Time, ms
Fig. 9 - - H o r i z o n t a l support reaction
(recorded)
E
Evaluated support reaction af
" 4 -
.J
z I
(.9
I
Fodure
'/i
~ 2 4
6
Time, ms
8 I0 12 Load point deflection U o ( t )
Experimental Mechanics ~ 67
concrete beam breaks into two halves and the two broken correspond to a 0.5-m hammer drop.) The significant
halves swing about their support points away from the stress-rate sensitivity of concrete may be noticed from the
tup. It may be assumed that the beam halves, although plots of Fig. 11. In general, all kinds of concretes were
having considerable kinetic energy, have no bending or found to be stronger (higher peak bending loads) and
strain energy and all the energy given by the area under tougher under impact than under static conditions. This
the generalized-bending-load versus load-point-deflection change in the mechanical behavior of concrete is in accor-
plot has been used up in creating new fracture surfaces. dance with the results obtained by other investigators s''9
It is shown in Ref. 13 that at the point of failure, the using totally different techniques of high-stress-rate
fracture energy and the kinetic energy of the broken generation.
halves together account for most of the energy lost by the The use of fibers in cementitious construction materials
hammer as given by eq (15). is gaining importance. These composites are generally
believed to be tougher than the unreinforced matrix and
as such are considered to be more impact resistant. The
Results and Discussion
higher values of fracture energies obtained for these
Detailed results of the extensive testing carried out composites (Table 1) than the unreinforced matrix seem
using the above described impact machine appear in Refs. to confirm this belief.
14-18. However, some of the results are presented in the Conventionally reinforced concrete with its strategically
form of generalized-bending-load versus load-point-deflec- placed reinforcing bars was found to be the most impact
tion plots of Figs. ll(a), (b), (c), (d) and (e) and also in resistant of all (Table 1). This suggests that fiber-rein-
the form of Table 1. These plots present a comparison forced matrix along with conventional reinforcement
between the static and the dynamic results obtained for would produce the most suitable material for impact-
normal-strength plain concrete, high-strength plain con- loading situations.
crete, normal-strength polypropylene-fiber-reinforced con-
crete, normal-strength steel-fiber-reinforced concrete, and
conventionally reinforced normal-strength concrete,
Conclusions
respectively. (The static tests correspond to a x-head The use of an instrumented, drop-weight impact
movement rate of 4.2 x 10-7 m/s. The dynamic results machine may be successfully made in order to investigate
the impact behavior of concrete. The instrumentation
described here is sufficient to apply the inertial loading
correction and to derive useful information from the
impact testing. Concrete is a significantly stress-rate-
TABLE 1 --RESULTS FROM STATIC AND IMPACT TESTS sensitive material. In general it is stronger and more energy
absorbing under impact than under static loading.
Static I Impact =
Peak Bending Fracture Peak Bending Fracture
Load 3 Energy ~ Load 3 Energy3 Acknowledgments
N Nm N Nm
The authors are grateful to the staff of the University
Normal-Strength 6344 (306)4 5.5 (1,5) 16932 (428) 90,1 (6.5)
of British Columbia, Department of Civil Engineering,
Plane Concrete s Vancouver, Canada where this work was carried out. In
particular, the help from Mr. G.D. Jolly, Mr. R.B. Nuss-
High-Strength 9720 (1809) 2.8 (0,6) 18760 (446) 74.9 (18.6)
Plain Concrete 6
baumer and Mr. M. Nazar is thankfully acknowledged.
Normal-Strength 7302 (99) 14.0 (4.4) 17300 (821) 119.4 (8.1)
Polypropylene- References
Fiber-
1. Abrams, D.A., "'Effect of Rate of Application of Load on the
Reinforced Compressive Strength of Concrete, "" Proc. ASTM 17, Part 2, 364-367
Concrete 7
(1917).
Normal-Strength 11500 (670) 44.8 (19) 24006 (1629) 237.6 (7.5) 2. Watstein, D., "Effect of Straining Rate on the Compressive
Steel-Fi ber- Strength and Elastic Properties of Concrete, '" J. ACI, 49 (8), 729-756
Reinforced (April 1953).
Concrete 8 3. Atchly, B.L. and Furr, H.L., "'Strength and Energy Absorption
Capacity of Plain Concrete Under Dynamic and Static Loading, "' J. ACI,
Conventionally 22671 (3102) 4421~ (45) 36664 (888) 8801~ (300) 745-756 (Nov. 1967).
Reinforced 4. Macneely, D.J. and Lash, S.D., "'Tensile Strength of Concrete
Normal-Strength Under Dynamic and Static Loading, ""J. ACI, 60 (6), 751-760 (1963).
Concrete g 5. Zielinsky, A.J., "'Fracture of Concrete and Mortar Under Uniaxial
Impact Tensile Loading, '" PhD Thesis, De(ft Univ. of Tech. (1982).
6. Suaris, W. and Shah, S.P., "'Properties of Concrete Subjected to
1Static tests done at the cross head speed of 4.2 x 10-~ m l s Impact, "' ASCE, Struct. Div., 109 (7), 1727-1741 (July 1983).
Z Banthia, N.P., "'Impact Resistance of Concrete," PhD Thesis,
=Height of hammer drop = 0.5 m
Univ. of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada (1987).
3Average taken over six or more specimens 8. Bentur, A., Mindess, S. and Banthia, N., "'The Behavior of
4Numbers in parentheses are the standard deviations Concrete Under Impact Loading: Experimental Procedures and Method
SCrushing strength = 42 MPa of Analysis, ""Materials and Structures, 19 (113), 371-378 (1986).
SCrushing strength = 82 MPa, 16 percent (by weight of cement) 9. Timoshenko, S.P. and Goodier, N., "'Theory of Elasticity,'"
of microsilica McGraw-HilI Kogakusha, Ltd., 3rd Ed. (1970).
7Fibrillated polypropylene fibers, 37-mm long, 0.5 percent by 10. Vanzi, S., Priest, A. and May, M.J., "'Influence of Inertial Loads
volume in Instrumented Impact Tests, ""Impact Testing of Metals, ASTM STP466,
aSteel fibers with both ends hooked, 50-mm long, 1.5 percent by 165-180 (1970).
11. Server, W.L., "'Impact Three Point Bend Testing for Notched and
volume Pre-Cracked Specimens, ""J. Test. and Eval., 6 (1), 29-34 (Jan. 1978).
9Steel Area = 1.12 percent 12. Gopalaratnam, V.S., Shah, S.P. and John, R., "'A Modbqed
o Calculated up to a point when the load had dropped back to Instrumented Charpy Test for Cement-Based Composites," EXPERIMENTAL
1/3 of its peak value MECHANICS, 24 (2), 102-111 (June 1984).
68 9 March 1989
18
16 NORMAL STRENGTH CONCRETE 16 HIGH STRENGTH CONCRETE
14 14
zl2 ~ t2
f-----Dynamic
.lO o I0
,,m
< 8
o,._1 6 ~ 6
4 4 Stotic
2 2
0 "~'-- J I r I I I I I f ~ i 0 I I l I I i I r I
I 2 3 4 5 6 I0 II 12 13
7 8 9 0 2 .'.'.'5 4 5 6 7 8 9 t0 II 12
DEFLECTION , mm DEFLECTION, rnm
(a) (b)
16
14
POLYPROPYLENE FIBRE
REINFORCED CONCRETE 24l
21
/ ~
STEEL FIBRE REINFORCED
CONCRETE
z12 z 18
_ . ~..-~- Dynomic
"~10 ,-,15
,--.,
ynomic <12
< 8
o
o J 9
..j 6
4 6
~,.~--
t St otic 3
2
t''"s "',t t t r 1 t I t 0 I I
0
0 I 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 I0 II 12 13 0 246 8 I0 12 14 16 18 20 22 24
DEFLECTION , m m DEFLECTION , mm
(c) (d)
CONVENTIONALLY REINFORCED
32 CONCRETE
<z 16
28
24
20 l, o,~
i i
Fig. 11--Results in terms of load (Pb) versus deflection
(Ue) plots for (a) normal-strength plain concrete, (b) high-
strength plain concrete, (c) normal-strength polypropylene
o 12 fiber-reinforced concrete, (d) normal-strength steel fiber-
_d , I/ \ reinforced concrete, and (e) conventionally reinforced
8
4 r
"-.....
"-..
V 1 normal-strength concrete
0 4 8 12 16 20 24 28 .32 36 40 4 4 4 8
DEFLECTION , m m
(e)
13. Banthia, N., Mindess, S. and Bentur, A., "'Energy Balance in Loading, "" Int. J. Cement Composites and Light Weight Concrete (UK),
Instrumented Impact Tests on Plain Concrete Beams, "" The SEM-RILEM 8 (3), 165-170 (1986).
Int. Conf. on Fracture of Concrete and Rock (June 1987). 17. Bentur, A., Mindess, S. and Banthia, N., "'The Behaviour of
14. Banthia, N., Mindess, S. and Bentur, A., "'Impact Behaviour of Reinforced Concrete Under Impact: The Effect of Concrete Strength, ""
Concrete Beams, "' Materials and Structures, 20, 293-302 (1987). The SEM-RIL.EM Int. Conf. on Fracture of Concrete and Rock (June 1987).
15. Mindess, S., Banthia, N. and Cheng, Y., "The Fracture Toughness 18. Banthia, N., Mindess, S. and Bentur, A., "'Steel Fibre Reinforced
of Concrete Under Impact Loading," Cement and Concrete Res., 17, Concrete Under Impact, "" Int. Symp. on Fibre Reinforced Concrete,
231-241 (1987). Madras, India (Dec. 1987).
16. Mindess, S., Banthia, N. and Bentur, A., "'The Response of 19. Hibbert, A.P., "'Impact Resistance of Fibre Concrete, "" PhD
Reinforced Concrete Beams with a Fibrous Concrete Matrix to Impact Thesis, Univ. of Surrey, UK (1979).
ExperimentaIMechanics 9 69