Experimental Study on the Compressive Strength and Fatigue Life of Cement Concrete under Temperature Differential Cycling

Abstract

Concrete, as an engineering material with extremely wide applications, is widely used in various infrastructure projects such as bridges, highways, and large buildings. However, structures such as highways and bridges often need to be situated in variable and harsh service environments for long periods. They not only face cyclic reciprocating vehicle loads but also have to contend with the effects of temperature cycling. Therefore, studying the impact and mechanism of temperature differential cycling on the compressive strength and fatigue life of cement concrete has certain theoretical significance and practical value. This study employed a comprehensive experimental design to investigate cement concrete specimens subjected to typical temperature variations (20–60 °C) and different numbers of temperature differential cycling (0, 60, 120, 180, 240, 300). Axial compressive strength tests, ultrasonic tests, and compressive fatigue tests were conducted. The axial compressive strength test measured the compressive strength of the cement concrete. It was found that with an increase in the number of temperature differential cycling, the compressive strength exhibited a trend of an initial increase followed by a decrease: at 60 cycles, the strength increased by 10.8%, gradually declined; returned to near-initial strength at 120 cycles, and continued decreasing, reaching a decline of 19.4% at 300 cycles. The ultrasonic test measured the ultrasound velocity of the concrete specimens after different temperature differential cycling. It revealed a decreasing trend in ultrasound velocity with an increase in times of temperature differential cycling, showing a strong linear relationship between the ultrasound velocity loss and strength loss, confirming the correlation between the degree of concrete strength degradation and internal damage. The compressive fatigue test analyzed the fatigue life variation in cement concrete under different times of temperature differential cycling and stress levels, showing good adherence to the Weibull distribution pattern. Based on the approximation assumptions of log-normal distribution and the Weibull distribution, the Weibull distribution parameters for the compressive fatigue life of cement concrete under temperature differential cycling were obtained.