Size effects on the mechanical behavior and the compressive failure strength of concrete: an extensive dataset

This data article provides a series of 492 stress-strain curves and compressive strength values obtained under the uniaxial compression of concrete samples fabricated from three different normal-weight concrete mixtures with four different cylindrical sample sizes ranging from 40 × 80 mm to 160 × 320 mm. These data are related to two research articles: “Revisiting statistical size effects on compressive failure of heterogeneous materials, with a special focus on concrete” (Vu et al., 2018) [1] and “Revisiting the concept of characteristic compressive strength of concrete” (Vu et al., 2020) [2]. In those papers, the strength values were used to (i) analyze and interpret statistical size effects on compressive strength of concrete (in ref. [1]), and (ii) discuss and evaluate the genuine characteristic compressive strength of concrete when size effects on strength are taken into account (in ref. [2]). This dataset could be reused for other statistical analyses on the mechanical behavior of concrete (e.g. elastic and strength properties) and associated possible mixture or size effects. In addition, the characteristic properties of the hardened concrete samples such as the apparent density, the moisture content, the modulus of elasticity as well as the internal microstructures are also provided.