Determination of cohesive fracture parameters of compacted clay beams

In this investigation the fracture parameters of compacted clay specimens has been obtained. Three point bend tests were used to find the fracture parameters of compacted clay specimens. One of the characteristics of these tests is that instead of a stress-controlled method a displacement controlled one has been used. Therefore by using these tests the softening portion of the load-displacement curve was obtained. By comparing the loaddisplacement curves obtained from a finite element analysis with the ones obtained from the experiments the desired fracture parameters have been calculated. It was also noted that by using a linear softening law for the cohesive zone model a very good agreement between experimental and numerical results has been achieved.

Keywords:

cohesive fracture parameters , three point bend test , displacement controlled method , finite element analysis