Characterization of mortar fracture based on three point bending test and XFEM

Mortar is one of the most widely used civil infrastructure materials, where the mortar fracture properties will significantly affect the structure service performance and life. In this paper, the fracture toughness of mortar specimen with respect to different thickness is investigated by conducting the three point bending test. The Extended Finite Element Method (XFEM) is also employed to model the crack propagation and failure process in the mortar specimen. It is found that the thickness of mortar specimen will affect the mortar cracking performance and the new emerged numerical tool XFEM is able to characterize the fracture properties of mortar specimen.