Determining tensile strength of concrete based on experimental loads in fracture test

A theoretical method for determining the tensile strength ft of concrete was proposed based on the experimental loads in fracture tests. Using the fracture extreme method, only the initial cracking load Pini and the peak load Pmax were required to be measured. The experimental data from three-point bending notched beams and wedge splitting specimens were used to calculate ft with different initial crack length versus specimen depth ratios α0 and specimen dimensions. The results show that the ft obtained by the proposed method agree with the test values, and the method is insensitive to α0 and specimen dimensions.