Flexural response of textile-reinforced sandwich slab with modified polymeric core

Abstract

Concrete sandwich panels are thermally insulative but difficult to erect due to heavy weight and thickness, and also require sufficient clear cover to avoid corrosion. Textile reinforcement is a novel field of research in civil engineering. The size, weight, and cost can be reduced using it as reinforcement in sandwich elements. The past researchers focus on sandwich slabs with polymeric cores which are prompt to delamination. Thus, this study compares the performance of steel mesh, and basalt textile fiber mesh reinforced sandwich slabs with conventional concrete and expanded perlite board as core materials. The sandwich slabs are tested under flexure in four-point bending and validated numerically by considering the non-linear characteristics of the material. The sandwich slabs reinforced with steel and basalt textile fiber mesh have similar load-carrying capacities with higher deflection of basalt textile mesh-reinforced sandwich slabs. The core material plays a major role than the type of reinforcement used. Conventional concrete core sandwich slabs did not show any delamination by enhancing the degree of composite action and mitigated the shear failure without shear connectors than sandwich slabs with expanded perlite cores. However, it affects the major property of the sandwich panel due to its density. Using the cast in-situ method in manufacturing sandwich specimens rather than adopting the slab stock method avoids delamination by proper bonding between the layers. Thus, textile-reinforced sandwich slabs have a similar load-carrying capacity as of concrete sandwich panels with steel mesh. The experimental results are validated well with numerical data.