BEHAVIOUR OF SIMPLY SUPPORTED FERROCEMENT PLATES UNDER UNIFORM LOADS

Abstract

. Considerable research activities are currently in progress to tackle the problem of minimising the cost of different structures considering various materials for a particular requirement• Ferrocement is one of the materials which has high strength/weight ratio and exhibits a highly ductile and distinct post cracking behaviour. Considering the past research efforts it is felt that ferrocement can be used for flooring, roofing and walling components more economically than R.C.G. The present study is aimed at studying the behaviour of simply supported square ferrocement slab panels and corres-ponding strips to obtain the Moment - Curvature relationships. The parameters varied in this study are number of layers of mesh, type of mesh; spacing of wires of mesh and diameter of mesh-wire. The design strength of mortar used in this study was 35 N/mm2• Since ferrocement elements are thin the effect of mem-brane forces are predominant beyond the Johansen' s load. The analysis has been carried out on the basis of upper bound solu-tion for the ultimate load of a simply supported square slab considering the effect of membrane forces [ 26,56]. A comparison of the results shows that the proposed method of analysis is reliable and predicts the behaviour of slab elements within reasonable limits.