Flexural behavior of precast concrete sandwich panels under different loading conditions such as punching and bending

Precast concrete sandwich panels having two wythes separated by a core may serve dual purposes of transferring load and insulating. Research studies with respect to flexural behavior of these panels under four-point bending are available in the literature. Nevertheless, experimental and analytical studies with respect to flexural behavior of concrete sandwich panels under punching load are not found. In this paper experimental and analytical studies carried out to understand and compare flexural behavior of concrete sandwich panels under two different loading conditions such as punching and four-point bending are presented and discussed. Experimental study indicates that, type of loading conditions affects the flexural behavior of the concrete sandwich panels significantly. The panel subjected to punching load failed in flexural mode, and its behavior is similar to conventional RC slab. Under four-point bending the panel failure is attributed to failure of concrete by combined effect of shear and flexural stresses. For both types of loading conditions, analytically predicted cracking moment is comparable to the experimental cracking moment. Further experimental and analytical studies are required in this area to develop design guidelines for practical applications of these types of panels under different loading conditions.