Flexural and Thermal Properties of Novel Energy Conservation Slotted Reinforced Concrete Beams

Abstract

Conventional solid reinforced concrete (RC) beams were modified to slotted beams for consideration as thermal insulation structural components. The slotted beam consisted of an outer and an inner beam, respectively, with a slot located near the middle of the beam along its width direction for filling thermal insulation material. Flexural and thermal behavior of the slotted beams were investigated. Three RC reference solid beams and six slotted beams were fabricated and tested under four-point bending tests. The test results indicated that the failure mode of both slotted beams and the solid beams was flexural failure. However, the damage process of the slotted beams was different from that of the solid beams at the final loading stage. The moment curvature analysis indicated that the tensile reinforcement ratio of the outer and inner beams had an important effect on the flexural behavior, especially the ductility of the slotted beams. Thermal study indicated that the heat transfer coefficient of the slotted beam was greatly reduced and the thermal inertia factor increased a lot, compared with the solid beam. In addition, FE simulation results showed that a new frame structure using slotted beams exhibited obvious and attractive thermal insulation property.