Flexural Behaviour of Steel-Foam Concrete Composite Light-Weight Panels

The present study explores the applicability of composite panel made of thin profiled steel sheets of thickness 0.8 mm as the outer skins with an infill Light-weight Foam Concrete (LFC) core of density 1200 kg/m3 for use as floor/roof panel in buildings by conducting experimental studies. This study was carried out in continuation with the previous studies reported by Prabha et al. (2013) on composite wall panels. Through-through mild steel connectors were used for the load transfer between sheet and concrete. Two types of concrete core, namely (a) Normal Foam Concrete (NFC) and (b) Fibre Reinforced Foam Concrete (FRFC) were investigated. The polypropylene fibres were used for improving the tensile strength of LFC. The composite panels exhibit gradual load-deflection response and ductile failure mode at higher deflections under four point bending test. The ultimate load of FRFC specimen is found to be 6% stronger than NFC panels, which implies that the use of polypropylene fibers marginally improved the flexural strength. The panels possess sufficient flexural capacity for spans upto 5 m and high ductility factor of 10 to be used as floor/roof panels in residential buildings. Numerical parametric studies indicate that the configuration 24 nos. of studs used in the experiment is found to be optimal and the flexural capacity increases proportionally for the higher thickness of steel sheet. Simplified equation is proposed for the evaluation of flexural strength of the panel.