Cyclic double punch test as a novel approach to reduce variation in concrete fatigue test results

The large scatter of concrete fatigue test results, commonly associated with the variation in concrete strength measurements, is an issue for performance measurements and design. In this study, considering the decreased variations reported for the monotonic Double Punch Test (DPT) in the literature, an experimental study was conducted to see whether DPT can be used to reduce the variation in concrete fatigue tests. For this, monotonic and cyclic 4-point bending test(4PBT)s, as well as DPTs were conducted, and the variations of the test results were compared by doing statistical analyses. The novelty of this study is the employment of DPT to measure the fatigue performance of concrete. Based on the results, cyclic DPT was found to be a promising technique for fatigue performance measurements with its decreased variation compared to the cyclic bending test. The authors believe that the presented paper will be beneficial for the following studies focused on the cyclic loading performance of concrete.