Statistical Aspects of Fracture in Concrete, I. An Analysis of Flexural Failure of Portland Cement Mortar from the Standpoint of Stochastic Theory

An application of the theory of stochastic processes to the static fracture of non-homogeneous brittle materials such as portland cement concrete is presented. A large number of flexural failure tests on standard mortar specimens made in accordance with JIS have been performed under constant loads as well as under uniformly increasing loads, and the results are analyzed statistically from the standpoint of stochastic theory. It is concluded that the scatter observed in the breaking time or the static strength of concrete appears to be a result of inherent characteristics of the material itself associated with a Markoff process as a kind of rate process.