Coupled Effects of Confining Pressure and Loading Rate on the Mechanical Behavior of Plastic Concrete

Abstract

Plastic concrete is used widely in the construction of cut-off walls. These structures might be exposed to coupled effects of dynamic load along with confining pressure. Therefore, careful study of the impacts of these combined stress conditions is one of the primary issues to be considered in analysis and design. Although there is a large number of experiments on the mechanical properties of plastic concrete in static loading and triaxial condition, none have studied the behavior of this material in dynamic state loading. Therefore, a series of unconfined and triaxial compression tests has been carried out under different confining pressures and strain rates to experimentally investigate the behavior of this material under combined stress conditions. The test results indicate that increasing the loading rate in the triaxial tests causes enhancement of the strength and friction angle of plastic concrete. This phenomenon is more evident in higher confining pressures.