On the application of the Double-Edge Wedge Splitting Test to thermally-damaged concretes

A new testing technique, named Double-Edge Wedge Splitting Test (DEWST), for determining the direct tensile strength of quasi-brittle materials – such as concrete – has been recently developed at the Politecnico di Milano. The principal aim is to simplify the loading device and the test set-up generally used in direct-tension tests: for example, the specimens need not to be glued to the press platens. Moreover, the crack pattern observed in a few preliminary tests is regular, and cracking can be easily controlled via the stroke of the loading machine. The present work aims to investigate the possibility of applying such technique to cha-racterize thermally-damaged plain concrete specimens. Three different concretes were considered (fc = 50, 80 and 90 MPa) and the results are compared to those obtained by means of traditional and well-defined tech-niques (splitting tests on cylinders, four-point bending displacement-controlled tests on prisms), in order to highlight the pros and cons of the proposed technique.