Pre-fabricated sandwich panels using cold-formed steel and textile reinforced concrete

• A novel prefabricated sandwich panel using profiled steel sheet and textile reinforced concrete.
• Response behavior of sandwich panel was investigated for floor applications.
• The panel showed ductile behavior even after 25% reduction in ultimate load.
• Numerical simulation for sandwich panels using nonlinear finite element analysis.

A novel prefabricated sandwich panel consisting of profiled steel sheet as a core material and textile reinforced concrete (TRC) as outer skins was developed. TRC consists of cementitious binder and an alkali resistant glass textile as reinforcement. The dimension of the TRC panel chosen for study was 1170 mm × 650 mm × 70 mm. Experimental investigations were carried out to determine the response behavior of sandwich panel under flexural load. It is observed that the ultimate flexural stress of the panel is 28.12 kN/m2 and is suitable for floor applications. Further, the panel showed ductile behavior even after the 25% reduction in ultimate load. Further, numerical modeling of two types of TRC sandwich panels was done using finite element software ABAQUS. TYPE-I sandwich panel considers perfect bond between profiled steel sheet and TRC. In TYPE II sandwich panel, self tapping screws were provided to connect profiled steel sheet and TRC skin. This panel is modeled with screws for attaching sheet and face skins. For material modeling, TRC, profiled steel sheet and self tapping screws were modeled as elastic–plastic. A displacement controlled analysis was performed for the TRC sandwich panels under two point loading condition. It was observed that the ultimate loads predicted by numerical models are in good agreement with experimental results.