Test Specimen for Testing of Cementitious Composite Fracture Mechanics Properties

Fracture mechanics properties as fracture energy and fracture toughness of cementitious composites are usually tested by bending test of beam specimen with some form of fabricated notch. Due to the characteristic length (in terms of fracture mechanics) of concrete and similar composites being in the range of 100 mm, specimens with dimensions 150x150x700 mm. weighting around 40 kg are mostly used for these tests, making large scale experiments costly in material and labor required for manufacturing, handling and consumable equipment. especially diamond coated saw blades required for notch cutting operations. New specimen design with special initial crack geometry providing test results of similar quality but not requiring the costly cutting operation phase of manufacturing and with mere one quarter of mass of the original one is proposed and compared in this paper.