Tests and numerical simulation of size effect on the strength of self-compacting concrete

Self-compacting concrete(SCC) is a concrete added with super plasticizer and it possesses high fluidity without segregation and bleeding.Needless to vibrate,it can flow and be compacted by itself.In this work,uniaxial compression tests of 70.7mm-edged cube SCC specimen under different boundary conditions were carried out,and the end effects on concrete strength and failure pattern were studied.A series of tests on different specimen sizes,70.7mm,100mm,150mm,200mm and 300mm,were conducted,and to avoid the end effects caused by different specimen sizes a friction-reducing measure was adopted.The results show a decreasing trend in the uniaxial compression strength of SCC with the increase of specimen size,and this trend demonstrates an obvious size effect and agrees well with the Weibull statistical theory.Numerical simulations based on a meso-scale probabilistic model were also made for these specimens.A comparison with the experiment shows that this model produces satisfactory results in terms of the size effect.