Bearing Strength of Concrete Pedestals Partially Loaded at Early Ages: An Experimental Work Mitigating Failure Risk

In many construction applications, including bridge pedestals, concrete corbels, and concrete anchors, the concrete’s local compressive strength attribute (bearing) is crucial. One of the benefits from concrete’s bearing is its role in mitigation construction failure risk and increase the safety of the buildings. The local compression characteristics of fully hardened concrete were the primary focus of earlier study, with less attention paid to early age concrete (less than 28 days). In order to evaluate the bearing qualities of early age concrete—here defined as the first month—the current experimental program is being carried out. While the bearing plate’s area (Ab), which was placed in the middle of each block’s top surface, differed in dimension (100 × 100 mm, 80 × 80 mm, 60 × 60 mm, and 40 × 40 mm), the concrete pedestals’ size remained constant at 250 × 250 × 200 mm. Tests were conducted on sixteen concrete supports. Four equal groups of samples were created, and each group underwent testing at a different age (T = 3, 7, 15, and 28 days). In each group, unloaded-to-loaded area is varied (A1/Ab = 6.25, 9.76, 17.36, and 39). The failure, bearing stress–slip curve, ultimate bearing strength and ultimate associated deformation of the tested concrete supports were studied. The results showed that the compressive and tension strengths increased by 178% and 244% when the concrete age reached 28 days compared to 3 days-concrete. As A1/Ab or/and concrete age increased, the bearing characteristics improved more. The ultimate bearing strength increased by 51%, 56.5%, and 69.5% at A1Ab = 6.25 when the samples’ concrete age increased from 3 to 7, 15, and 28 days. The main contribution of this study is a novel formula to forecast the concrete’s bearing strength while accounting for the impact of the concrete’s age and the ratio A1Ab.