Control procedures to check the a-O relationship used to design a SFRC slab

Abstract

In the paper, the reliability of the Model Code approach for evaluating the bearing capacity of a Steel Fiber Reinforced Concrete (SFRC) elevated slab is discussed with reference to the case of a twostories family house recently built in Italy. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first realization of SFRC elevated slab in Italy. Six standard notched specimens have been cast and tested through a third point bending test set-up. These tests allowed to classify the fiber reinforced material based on post–cracking residual strengths measured for two different crack openings, respectively related to serviceability and ultimate limit states. In conjunction with the SFRC slab casting, four shallow beams (1.5×0.5×0.25 m) having the same thickness of the slab were cast. The shallow beams have been tested in bending to verify the specific bearing capacity of the slab having used for both the slab and the shallow beams the same casting procedure. After the beam tests, coring procedures have been carried out on the shallow beams in order to measure the SFRC tensile behavior. The cored cylinders were tested with two non-standardized indirect tensile methodologies: Double Edge Wedge Splitting (DEWS) and Double Punch (Barcelona) tests.