Cracking of Continuously Reinforced Concrete Pavements at a Young Age

Calculation of steel-concrete structures calls for understanding the bonding mechanisms, then, to reproduce them, formulating models of behaviour representative of the interface between the two materials in contact. In view of the researches already performed in this domain, we thought it essential to make use of a new test that would simulate the behaviour of a concrete adhering to a reinforcement and be capable of leading to a constitutive law for the interface. Analysis of these bond tests served to characterize, for a given reinforcement, the relation expressing the crack opening versus the applied tensile force. In addition, a linear relation was found between the reinforcement diameter and the crack opening that corresponds to it at an applied stress of 500 MPa, the guaranteed yield strength of the reinforcements commonly used in France.