Longitudinal Shear Analysis of Composite Slabs with Prepressed Embossments

Abstract

Composite slabs with prepressed embossments present an effective solution for horizontal load bearing structures. Sheeting serves as a formwork in construction stage and as a tension bearing member after hardening of concrete. There is no need for additional tensile reinforcement in case of sufficient longitudinal shear bearing capacity of the embossments. Longitudinal shear bearing capacity is not precisely determined when designing according to nowadays standards. Full scale bending tests of the slabs are used to determine characteristics for m – k method or partial connection method. Bending tests are expensive and space demanding. Alternatively small-scale shear tests can be used to determine shear characteristics of the sheeting. However, shear tests cannot include all the effects affecting the bearing capacity of bended slab, such as effect of curvature or distribution of load. Therefore, related design method has to be used to determine load bearing capacity of the slab in bending. This paper extends achievements presented by the authors in contribution in CRRB 2013. The results of small-scale tests are compared with results of numerical models of the slab in shear. Numerical models are created in two different finite element codes. Setting of steel-concrete interface properties in the models is validated using data from literature.