Flexural studies on Basalt Fiber Reinforced Composite sandwich panel with profile sheet as core

• Basalt fiber & profile sheet are used in sandwich panel, studied as flexural member.
• Constructed adopting both prefabrication and cast-in-situ construction process.
• The panel has ultimate flexural strength of 26 kN exhibiting ductile behaviour.
• Compositeness, failure mechanism & debonding phenomenon was studied experimentally.
• Partial compositeness of the panel has been validated using numerical approach.

In this paper, the experimental behaviour of Basalt Fiber Reinforced Composite (BFRC) sandwich panel under flexural loading has been investigated. The BFRC sandwich panel investigated in this study comprises of top skin, bottom skin and core. Both top and bottom skin are composed of BFRC mix and flanges of profile sheet to act as composite in effectively resisting flexure where as the core is constituted by the web portion of profile sheet in resisting shear. The panel is constructed by adopting both prefabrication and cast-in-situ construction process exploiting the advantages of both the process. The panel has ultimate flexural strength of 26 kN, exhibiting ductile behaviour. The panel exhibited 200% ductility over the deflection at the ultimate load with 10% loss in the ultimate load making it an ideal for flooring units. Further, numerical study has been conducted to assess the integrity of the connection between skin and core and to find the effectiveness of connection on overall strength, stiffness of the panel. The results from the finite element analysis have been compared with the experimental results of BFRC sandwich panel and are found to be in good agreement. Finite element study also helped in concluding that with improved connection mechanism both strength and stiffness of panel can be enhanced.