Experimental and theoretical behavior of reinforced concrete one way slabs strengthened by ferrocement cover at tension face

Abstract EN

This paper presents a study of the flexural behavior of strengthened reinforced concrete one slabs by ferrocement cover in tension.

This study included testing 14 simply supported one way slabs, which include 3 control slabs,11 strengthened slabs.

In the strengthened slabs, the effect of the using ferrocement cover on the specimens of avairable depth, the thickness of ferrocement cover, number of wire mesh layers on ferrocement and the compressive strength for mortar on the ultimate load, mid span deflection at ultimate load and cracks pattern were discussed.

All reinforced concrete slab specimens were designed of dimensions (1800mm*300mm) with (70-100mm) thickness and reinforced identically to fail in flexure.

All slabs have been tested in simply supported conditions subjected to two point loads.

The experimental results show that the ultimate loads are increased by about (4.1-15.3%) for the slabs strengthened with ferrocement with respect to the unstrengthened reinforced concrete slab (control slab).

Three-dimensional nonlinear finite element analysis has been used to conduct the analytical investigation, ANSYS (Version 14.0) computer program was used in this study.

The analytical result from modeling in ANSYS program exhibited a good agreement with experimental results.