Structural Performance Assessment of Innovative Hollow Cellular Panels for Modular Flooring System

Lightweight modular construction has become an increasing need to meet the housing requirements around the world today. The benefits of modular construction ranging from rapid production, consistency in quality, sustainability, and ease of use have widened the scope for the construction of residential, commercial, and even emergency preparedness facilities. This study introduces novel floor panels that can be flat-packed and built into modular housing components on-site with minimal labour and assistance. The flooring system uses hollow cellular panels made of various configurations of trapezoidal steel sheets. The structural performance of three different configurations of these hollow flooring systems as a modular component is presented in this study by analysing the failure modes, load-displacement parameters, and strain behaviour. The study confirms significant advantages of the proposed hollow floor systems, with multi-cells reporting higher load-carrying capacity. The hollow flooring system performed well in terms of structural performance and ease in fabrication as opposed to the conventional formworks and commercial temporary flooring systems. The proposed flooring system promises efficient application as working platforms or formworks in temporary infrastructural facilities and emergency construction activities.

Experimental study of shear transfer in slim floor systems using precast concrete hollow core slabs and steel beam with web circular opening

Steel-concrete slim flooring system using precast concrete hollow core slabs and steel beam with web openings is an innovative construction system designed to combine the high bending resistance of both precast prestressed hollow core slabs and steel beam with web openings. This system can provide floor systems with a minimum constructional depth in comparison with ordinary composite floors. The aim of this study was to evaluate in an exploratory way the shear transferring mechanism between the steel beam with circular web opening and the precast hollow-concrete slab. The shear connection is formed by in-situ concrete passes through the web openings and infill the voids of the precast slabs. One push-out test was conducted to investigate the shear transferring mechanism of shear connection and the experimental results were compared to analytical methods. The shear resistance of the shear connection was predicted with good accurate by analytical methods.

Finite Element Modelling for Structural Performance of Slim Floors in Fire and Influence of Protection Materials

Slim floor systems are very common nowadays and various types are currently being used for the construction of high-rise buildings and car parks. Concrete in slim floor beams encases the steel beam section which helps to improve their fire resistance. Despite their higher fire resistance, several fire protection materials like intumescent coatings are often used to achieve a higher fire resistance where desired. The thermal properties and behaviour of various intumescent coating materials were previously studied through experimental investigations. This paper presents finite element analyses to simulate the response of unprotected and protected slim floor beams in fire using different simulation tools. For this purpose, fire tests conducted on unprotected slim floor beams and intumescent coating materials are modelled using research and commercial software. Results from the analyses are compared and verified with the available test data. These validated models are later combined to study the behaviour of protected slim floor beams in fire. Results from the study show that the research and the commercial software replicate the behaviour of slim floor beams and protection materials with good accuracy. Due to the presence of the intumescent coating, the protected slim floor beams displayed a better fire resistance as the temperature of the steel part remained below 400 °C even after 60-min of standard heating. The protected slim floor beams continued to support the external loads even after 120 min of heating.

A comparative study of several nature-inspired algorithms in steel deck floor system cost optimization

Steel deck floor systems can be considered as one of the main components of a structure. As technology advances, the role of optimization is used in many aspects of structural designs. Steel deck floor systems are one of many components that are usually optimized to look for its optimum cost but are still able to hold the structure. This study compares the performance of the particle swarm optimization (PSO), artificial bee colony (ABC), differential evolution (DE), and symbiotic organisms search (SOS), that categorized as nature-inspired algorithms, in the optimization of a steel deck floor system. The variables considered are the edge beams, interior beams, and the composite steel deck. The results show that the SOS gives the most optimum cost with a better average and a perfect success rate.

Innovative Lightweight Cold-Formed Steel-Concrete Composite Floor System – LWT-FLOOR project

To provide the foundations for economic and social prosperity, countries worldwide need to be making a term investment in their building assets. However, there is a lack of a systematic approach, such as manufacturing innovations, to maximize the values of building components and materials in its entire lifecycle. Steel-concrete composite floor systems are one of the most cost-effective construction systems for multi-storey steel buildings because they combine structural efficiency with the speed of construction. These advantages depend on the efficiency of combining steel and concrete structural elements to avoid their inherent disadvantages. This paper presents a solution that integrates state-of-the-art knowledge in new, fast and productive spot-welding technology and innovative cold-formed steel-concrete composite solutions. The solution proposes a new construction method as a combination of built- up cold-formed steel members and cast-in-place concrete slab. The proposed floor system offers key benefits in terms of a high degree of prefabrication, reusability and long spanning capability.