Author(s)

A. Carpinteri & B. Chiaia

Abstract

Experimental evidence of the fractality of fracture surfaces has been widely recognized in the case of concrete, ceramics and other disordered materials. A post-mortem investigation on concrete fracture surfaces has been carried out, yielding non-integer (fractal) dimensions of profiles, which are then related to the " renormalized fracture energy" of the material. The assumption of multifractality for the damaged material microstructure produces a dimensional increment with respect to the number 2, and represents the basis for the so-called Multifractal Scaling Law. A transition from extreme Brownian disorder (slope 1/2) to extreme order (zero slope) may be evidenced in the bilogarithmic diagram: the nominal fracture energy Qp increases with specimen size by following a non-linear trend.

Keywords