The ductile behavior of high performance concrete in compression

The ductility of High Performance Concrete (HPC) can develop both in tension and compression. This aspect is evidenced in the present paper by measuring the mechanical response of normal vibrated concrete (NC), self-compacting concrete (SC) and some HPCs cylindrical specimens under uniaxial and triaxial compression. The post-peak behaviour of these specimens is defined by a non-dimensional function that relates the inelastic displacement and the relative stress during softening. As a result, in normal and self-consolidating concrete, fracture toughness in compression increases in the presence of active confinement. Moreover, HPC specimens, which can also show strain hardening in tension, provide a very ductile behaviour even in absence of confinement. In particular, during the post-peak stage, the ductility of HPC is comparable with that of NC or SC at 1 MPa of confining pressure. Moreover, the performance of fiber-reinforced composites can be quantified by the distributed confining pressure generated by the fibers. The presence of HPC in compressed columns is therefore sufficient to create a sort of active distributed confinement, and improve both the mechanical behaviour of concrete and its durability.