Keywords: dynamic bending test, quasi-brittle material, experiment design, parametric study, material properties.Abstract. Performance prediction of fibre-reinforced concrete structures under impact is of major importance in a wide range of industrial applications. Therefore, the study of the dynamic behaviour of the material is necessary to quantify the dynamic mechanical properties of the material in terms of both mechanical response and fracture behaviour : dynamic fracture energy and tensile strength. This study aims to design a modified Hopkinson bar bending test with a series of numerical simulations prior to the actual test in order to select a feasible experiment configuration. Results of a dynamic bending experiment on a steel fibre-reinforced concrete specimen loaded up to failure are presented.

The analysis and prediction of the degradation process and cracking of concrete structures with numerical models is an important issue in the field of civil engineering. In order to describe the global behavior of a structure composed of quasi-brittle material as well as local fields, a continuous approach using nonlinear constitutive law (e.g. damage, plasticity,. . .) remains the most efficient one regarding the computational time. However, one has to consider additional tools to extract discrete information about cracks like spacing and openings from these computations. The objective of this research is to propose tools capable of extracting local information such as cracking using two post-treatment methods of a global finite element analysis. These methods are applied to a dynamic one-point bend test case and results show the capability of both methods to give a good estimation of crack path and openings.