BUCKLING BEHAVIOUR OF FERROCEMENT PLATES

Abstract

Ferrocement is one of the most versatile engineering materials and its unit cost is relatively low. It is also useful in terms of strength and speed of construction. Because of small thickness of section it has lower dead weight and hence it can be used very effectively for the construction of wall panels for which buckling behaviour of ferrocement plates needs to be investigated. In present investigation buckling behaviour of ferrocement plates of size 300mm x 1000mm and thickness varying from 15mm to 55mm has been studied. Plates with thickness 15mm, 20mm, 30mm, 35mm, 40mm and 55mm were tested with fixed end conditions while plates with thickness 25mm, 30mm, 35mm and 40mm.were tested with hinged end conditions. Hence slenderness ratio for fixed ended specimens•varied from 29 to 105 while for hinged ended specimens it varied from 89 to 142. Surface strains were measured for all the specimens, lateral deflections were measured at top, middle and bottom for selected specimens. Poisson's ratio was also calculated-for some specimens. Theoretical crushing and buckling strengths were also calculated and a comparison was made between experimental and theoretical strengths. For fixed ended specimen groups, which failed in buckling, experimental results were on lower side in comparison to theoretically obtained values_ which might be due to lack of proper fixity at the edges. For all other cases there was a satisfactory correspondence between experimental and theoretical strengths.