PSI - Issue 47

Luciano Feo et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 47 (2023) 800–811 Author name / Structural Integrity Procedia 00 (2019) 000–000

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The results of the simulations, in terms of load-deflection curves, for each nanofiller content, are plotted in Figure 8. In particular, the coloured curves represent the average numerical results (obtained as the average of the three runs) instead, the black and gray curves represent the experimental ones. For each mixture, as well as the experimental results, the numerical curves are divided into three branches: the elastic one, in which the load increases linearly with the mid-span deflection, the cracking one, where the load decreases with the increase of deflection, and the post-cracking one that differs depending on the content of nanofiller. The comparison shows that, whatever the content of nanofiller, the elastic branch of the experimental results matches almost perfectly to the numerical one. On the other hand, some differences are presented in the post-crack response, in fact a softening response is exhibited when the content of nanofiller is low (i.e., 0.0% and 0.05%) and a hardening behavior is observed when the content is above 0.05%.

Figure 8 . Comparison between experimental results (i.e., black and gray lines) and numerical one (i.e., coloured lines) in terms of load-deflection curves.

Figure 9 plots the result of the correlation between the nanofiller content and the fracture energy, while in Figure 10 are shown the results of the correlation between the nanofiller content and the bond stresses as calibrated by the back-analysis.

Figure 9 . Correlation between nanofiller content (%) and fracture energy (N/mm).