Testing of anchorages in concrete under dynamic loading

An experimental campaign has been conducted for investigating the response of anchorages in concrete, principally to dynamic loads. Normal high performance steel fiber reinforced concretes have been considered and the best test pieces included: plain concrete specimens, cast-in-place and post installed rebars and cast-in-place and post-installed anchors. Innovative, Hopkinson bar based experiments have been produced for strain rates from 10E-6/sec up to 20/sec. The satisfactory performance with respect to concrete cone failure tensile loads of the post-installed anchors has been verified. The test results have also demonstrated that force-displacement diagrams for dynamic loading tend in general to lie above the corresponding static ones, thus indicating that additional safety margins exist in case of rapid dynamic loading.