The Live Load Capacity of Rectangular Precast Reinforced Concrete Stick Plates

Abstract

The process of making reinforced cast-in-place concrete plates is a long-term one and it is very expensive. Cast-in-place concrete requires the use of formwork, which raises the cost. An innovation in the field of precast concrete plates will significantly reduce cost and time. The purpose of this study is to investigate the flexural capacity of precast concrete plates as a function of slab thickness, with identical tensile reinforcement. The concrete’s cylindrical compression strength used in this study has been 22.5 MPa. This research has been conducted both experimentally and numerically using a single stick plate specimen with dimensions of 6 cm × 10 cm × 100 cm (ESP-6 and SSP-6) and 8 cm × 10 cm × 100 cm (ESP-8 and SSP-8). ESP stands for the experimentally tested specimen. The flexural test using a-single-point loading system has been performed in order to determine the capacity and the load-displacement responses of the stick plate. On the next step, a finite element model (FEM) has been constructed, and the experimental data obtained from the ESP specimens have been used to validate the SSP model. The FEM model has been further utilized to simulate the behaviour of a range in stick plates (SSP). The numerical models SSP have had a range in thickness from 70, 90 and 100 mm. It has been found that the live load carrying capacity of specimens SSP-6, SSP-7, SSP-8, SSP-9, and SSP-10 has been 63, 91, 127, 138 and 165 kg/m2, respectively. The initial stiffness of the specimens has been identical up till 30% of the ultimate load, while the moment carrying capacity increased as a function of plate thickness, followed a linear path.