Behavior of light weight sandwich panels under out of plane bending loading

This paper presents the flexural behavior & ultimate strength performance of innovative light weight sandwich panels of size 3×1.2 m with two different solidity ratios viz. 0.5 and 0.33 under out of plane bending load. From the experimental studies, it is observed that the flexural strength and the stiffness are increased by about 46% and five folds for lesser solidity ratio case. From the measured strains of the shear connectors, full shear transfer between the concrete wythes is observed. The yielding occurred approximately at 4% and 0.55% of the ultimate deformation for 100 mm & 150 mm thick panels, which shows the large ductility characteristics of the panels. From the study, it is inferred that the light weight sandwich panels behave structurally in a very similar manner to reinforced concrete panels. Further from the numerical study, it is observed that the numerical values obtained by FE analysis are in good agreement with the experimental observations.