Issue 73

V. Tomei et alii, Fracture and Structural Integrity, 73 (2025) 181-199; DOI: 10.3221/IGF-ESIS.73.13

In all the cases, also the three-point bending tests show a brittle behavior, characterized by a sudden failure immediately after reaching the peak load, highlighting an absent post-peak behavior. The brittle behavior is also evident from the picture of the samples after failure (Fig. 10) that show that the specimens collapse approximately at the mid-span of the beam, without evidence of plastic deformations. Moreover, it is evident that the node where the load is applied always fails, except for two BR_60 specimens shown in the Fig. 10a (the first two on the left), which demonstrate that the node where the force is applied does not fail; instead, the adjacent node does. This is due to an off-center load application (caused by the absence of the semi-cylindric housing), which lead to lateral shift of the samples during the experimental test.

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 F (kN) Δ (mm) Tension Test

TR_60 TR_72

Figure 7: Tension test on TR_60/72: Force-Displacement curves.

(a)

(b) Figure 8: Picture of samples after tension tests: (a) TR_60; (b) TR_72.

192