Structural behavior of prestressed SCC hollow core slabs

Recent studies raised a concern about the compaction quality of concrete of deep hollow core slabs (HCS) during the fabrication process using the dry extrusion method. Due to its specific properties, self-compacting concrete (SCC) can serve as a practical solution to such a problem by producing HCS using SCC. However, the structural behavior of such slabs should be examined and verified before the acceptance of SCC in such an application. This paper investigates the structural behavior of SCC-HCS. In addition to the development of HCS using SCC, the study also included flexural and shear tests on the developed slabs. A total of 8 full-scale HCS including two sizes of 300 mm and 470 mm thickness were constructed and tested up to failure. The slabs comprised 4 specimens fabricated using SCC and 4 specimens using the dry cast concrete (DCC) technique for the sake of comparison and verification. Also, 4 of the specimens were tested in flexure and the other 4 were tested in shear. The outcomes of this investigation showed that the structural behavior of SCC-HCS was comparable to that of DCC-HCS. Furthermore, both flexural and shear capacities of SCC slabs were conservatively predicted by the relevant ACI 318-14 design expressions.