Experimental study on compressive young's moduli and tensile young's modulus of fly ash concrete

Initial cracks due to volume changes at an early age affect the durability of concrete structures, so numerical simulations are often conducted in order to predict cracks. Such prediction requires some mechanical properties of early age concrete. Tensile Young's modulus is directly dependent on the prediction of tensile stress and is one of the important input data for FEM analysis. However, direct tension test for tensile Young's modulus needs a unique apparatus and specimen, and such test is not suitable for evaluating Young's modulus at early ages of concrete. The present study compared tensile Young's modulus with compressive Young's moduli of Fly ash concrete. Compressive Young's moduli used in this study were secant modulus and initial tangent modulus. In addition, linear modulus taken from a regression line of a compressive stress-strain curve in the range of stresses less than the splitting tensile strength was also evaluated. It is found that the secant modulus, which is generally used as Young's modulus in Japan was clearly smaller than the tensile Young's modulus, which means that, tensile stresses evaluated using a secant modulus might be underestimated. On the other hand, linear modulus and initial tangent modulus were almost equal to the tensile Young's modulus. This result indicates that tensile stresses can be evaluated using Young's modulus obtained from a compression test with general apparatus and specimens.