Tensile fracture behavior of heterogeneous materials based on fractal geometry

Many of heterogeneous structural materials, like concrete, have different behavior under tensile stresses in comparison to their behavior under compressive stresses. The aim of this paper is to interpret behavior of such materials subjected to tensile stresses, by using newly introduced concept of fractal geometry. In the first part of this paper, tensile behavior of granular composites has been studied by using fractal geometry. It is shown that the fractality of the cross section in this kind of composites can be used to interpret the size effect on tensile strength. In fact, this work is a modification with innovations on the previous studies on fractal based size effect.This hypothesis that the fracture surfaces of quasi-brittle materials are fractals has been verified by several investigations. Accordingly, in the other part of this paper, softening process in heterogeneous materials is studied. Resulting from presented approach, a new softening curve for quasi-brittle materials is proposed. This new softening curve is denominated “Quasi-fractal softening curve” and is consisted of two parts, a linear portion in beginning part and an exponential portion in rest of the curve. This makes it very compatible to the pre-existing softening curves.