Structural performance evaluation of industrial floor slabs using Fiber Reinforced Concrete (FRC) through analytical and experimental investigation

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The Canadian construction market has been heavily influenced by industrial/commercial construction in recent years. The concrete slab-on-grade construction in most industrial applications is generally designed to avoid limitations in the future flexibility of most industrial buildings, resulting in design solutions that rely on the volume of structural material to resolve potential future capacity deficiencies. In such structures cracking is quite common and many of these slabs start developing the first signs of cracking only after a few years of being in service. Such cracking is either load-related (i.e. weakened subgrade, too little slab thickness, overloading) or attributable to temperature or environment (i.e. shrinkage), or is caused by a combination of these factors. In this research, the use of fiber reinforced concrete (FRC) over conventional concrete as a potential solution to overcome structural capacity, durability, and cracking problems in industrial floor systems will be studied through several experimental and numerical case studies. A good understanding of the behaviour of these structures is necessary in order to meet design objectives, while containing construction and maintenance costs. The goal is to improve the concrete technology and to provide engineers with practical design guidelines in an effort to introduce a superior design solution. The main objective is to investigate if the proper choice of a newly developed material such as FRC could lead to a superior and more efficient structural performance in the vulnerable regions of large industrial floors, as compared to the customary concrete material typically used in today's practice. The study involves testing plain and FRC slab and beam specimens subjected to a monotonic loading condition. A state-of-the-art numerical model will also be developed to simulate the experimental program for parametric studies. It is expected that this research program will provide a useful framework to better understand the behavior of large concrete industrial floor systems under a wide range of applicable design criteria. This framework will be useful towards the development of practical design guidelines for these structures and beneficial to the Canadian economy.