ABSTRACT
A new procedure is proposed to show the effect of the sign of stress on the behaviour of the material. First it consists in creating distributed damage by a tensile loading, and subsequently applying a compressive loading on the same specimen. Distributed damage is obtained through aluminum bars glued on the lateral surfaces of the concrete specimen ; the load is applied on the bars which impose an uniform strain state to concrete, so that no localization appears in spite of large strain values. The results obtained show that a strain-softening behaviour in the context of continuum media is possible for concrete. The subsequent compressive loading shows that the behaviour is not considerably modified by tensile damage (stiffness and ultimate stress values), that exhibits the so-called unilateral character of concrete behaviour.
