Crack Resistance under Compressive Stress of Concrete Made Using Granulated Blast-furnace Slag Sand

Abstract

Cyclic loading tests are conducted for four cases with upper-limit stress ratios of 35%, 50%, 65%, and 80% in order to investigate the crack resistance under compressive stress of concrete made using granulated blast-furnace slag sand (BFS), obtained from three steelworks in Japan. Mountain sand is used as a natural aggregate for comparison and the energy for crack nucleation and propagation is derived for each type of concrete. It is found that BFS concrete generally has a lower crack propagation energy and a higher strain recovery rate than concrete made using natural aggregate. Within the scope of the study, BFS concrete is deemed to possess adequate resistance with respect to concrete crack propagation, regardless of the type of BFS used. This paper is an English translation of the authors’ previous work [Hashimoto, R. and Onoue, K., (2022). “Crack resistance of concrete using granulated blast-furnace slag sand under compressive stress.” Proceedings of the Japan Concrete Institute, 44, 338-393. (in Japanese)].