Size effect for normal strength concrete cylinders subjected to axial impact

This paper describes a multi-national collaborative study that included both numerical and experimental efforts carried out on geometrically similar normal strength concrete (NSC) cylinders of different sizes subjected to axial impact. A parallel study on high strength concrete (HSC), that was carried out earlier, was described in a previous paper (International Journal of Impact Engineering, Elsevier Ltd. 2003; 28: 1001–1016). This study investigated the size effect phenomenon for NSC cylinders under short duration time-dependent compressive loads. Unlike the study on HSC that used soft impact only, this study on NSC used both soft and hard impact. Results from the tests and simulations showed the existence of a size effect in NSC cylinders under both, hard and soft, impact loading. This time-dependent size effect is different from the known static size effect.