Determining Paris’ Law Parameters for Concrete Using Stochastic Approach from S–N Curve

It is important to consider fatigue crack growth in concrete as a random process in order to reliably determine the fatigue life of a structure and for structural monitoring. Paris’ law is one of the most widely used equations for stochastic fatigue analysis of structures. The Paris’ law parameters C and m are vital in the crack growth analysis, and their evaluation is very helpful for accurate analysis of fatigue crack growth and estimation of residual life of the structure. In the past, these parameters were determined by linear regression of experimental crack growth curves for ductile materials such as steel, but for quasi-brittle materials, the direct linear regression would provide the value of the parameters with large errors. This work is an attempt to predict Paris’ law parameters ‘C’ and ‘m’ using S–N curve data by using a stochastic approach. The results are obtained and compared for alkali-activated concrete specimens, the data for which is taken from the literature.