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

近年来，加拿大建筑市场受到工业/商业建筑的严重影响。在大多数工业应用中，混凝土楼板建筑通常被设计为避免大多数工业建筑未来灵活性的限制，从而导致依赖于结构材料体积的设计解决方案，以解决潜在的未来容量不足。在这种结构中，开裂是很常见的，许多这种板在使用几年后才开始出现开裂的迹象。这种开裂或者与荷载有关（即地基弱化、板厚过小、超载），或者可归因于温度或环境（即收缩），或者由这些因素的组合引起。在这项研究中，使用纤维增强混凝土（FRC）在传统的混凝土作为一个潜在的解决方案，以克服结构能力，耐久性和开裂问题，在工业地板系统将通过几个实验和数值案例研究。为了满足设计目标，同时控制施工和维护成本，有必要对这些结构的行为有很好的了解。其目的是改进混凝土技术，并为工程师提供实用的设计指南，以引入上级设计解决方案。其主要目的是调查，如果正确选择一个新开发的材料，如FRC可能会导致一个上级和更有效的结构性能，在大型工业地板的脆弱区域相比，在今天的实践中通常使用的混凝土材料。这项研究涉及测试平原和FRC板和梁标本进行单调加载条件。一个国家的最先进的数值模型也将被开发来模拟参数研究的实验方案。预计这项研究计划将提供一个有用的框架，以更好地了解大型混凝土工业地板系统的行为下，广泛的适用的设计标准。这一框架将有助于为这些结构制定实用的设计准则，并有利于加拿大经济。

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.