City Research Online

Abstract

This paper presents the experimental results of four static full-size four-point bending tests to investigate the flexural behaviour of a recently developed prefabricated steel-concrete composite ultra-shallow flooring system (PUSS®). The flooring system comprises of T-ribbed concrete floors partially-embedded within and connected to side C-channel beams and horizontally-oriented shear connectors. This study investigates the effects of three parameters on the flexural behaviour of PUSS and the performance of the shear connectors under bending. The parameters under study are the type of concrete, degree of shear connection and depth of the slab. Four 4m span test specimens are constructed using two types of concrete, two with reinforced normal weight concrete (NWC) and the remaining two with reinforced lightweight aggregates concrete (LWC). Three of the test specimens employ the unique shear connection system composed of horizontally-oriented steel dowels with horizontally-oriented web-welded shear studs (dowels with WWSS) while the last one employs horizontal steel dowels only. The contribution of the above parameters on flexural behaviour and failure mechanisms are examined. The study concludes that replacing NWC with LWC of similar strength does not affect the flexural behaviour of PUSS in terms of slab capacity, ductility and failure mechanism. However, LWC demonstrates lower initial stiffness and leads to the development of larger cracks as loads increases. Also, reducing the degree of shear connection lowers the moment capacity of the slabs and results in failure of some shear connectors during testing. PUSS units exhibit ductile behaviour under bending conditions regardless of the degree of shear connection.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons CC-BY license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Publisher Keywords:	Flexural tests; Composite slabs; Ultra-shallow flooring system; Lightweight concrete; Shear connectors; Shear studs
Subjects:	T Technology > TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General) T Technology > TH Building construction
Departments:	School of Science & Technology School of Science & Technology > Engineering
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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