Long span flat slab systems with internal spherical void formers have been used in Europe for a decade now. Cobiax® is the brand name of a successful system, recently introduced in South Africa. It is a bi-axial reinforced concrete flat slab system, with a grid of internal spherical void formers. The main advantage is the possibility of long spans due to the significant reduction in own weight, as well as the fast construction sequence with the use of flat slab formwork systems. Design requirements of SANS 10100:2000 are affected. Vertical shear capacity is a concern due to loss of aggregate interlock. Research in Germany proved a factor of 0.55 to be a conservative shear resistance reduction factor for Cobiax slabs. Theoretical and preliminary laboratory South African research suggests that a greater factor of 0.85 might be used when considering the shear capacity of the steel cages. These cages’ vertical legs also cross the cold joint caused by the two concrete pours required for Cobiax slabs, and proved to provide sufficient horisontal shear resistance if the correct cage diameters are used. Laboratory tests in Germany supported by theoretical calculations further showed reduced deflections for Cobiax slabs. Although stiffness and own weight are reduced due to the voids, Cobiax slabs had smaller absolute deflections than solid slabs with the same thickness. Cobiax research factors are safe to apply to SANS 10100-01:2000. The economy of Cobiax slabs was tested against that of coffer and post-tensioned slabs. Different span lengths and loads were considered. Based on 2007 material costs in South Africa, Cobiax slabs subject to the same loads and span lengths will be slightly more expensive than that of coffer slabs and post-tensioned slabs when considering only direct slab construction costs. Cobiax will be most appropriate where a flat soffit is required for high multi-storey buildings, requiring large spans with a light load application. Copyright / Dissertation (MEng)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Civil Engineering / unrestricted

Fibre reinforcement polymers (FRP) are non-corrodible materials used instead of conventional steel and have been approved to be an effective way to overcome corrosion problems. FRP, in most cases, can have a higher tensile strength, but a lower tensile modulus of elasticity compared to that of conventional steel bars. This study aimed to examine flat slab specimens reinforced with glass fibre reinforced polymer (GFRP) and steel bar materials for punching shear behaviour. Six full-scale two-way slab specimens were constructed and tested under concentric load up to failure. One of the main objectives is to study the effect of reinforcement spacing with the same reinforcement ratio on the punching shear strength. In addition, two other parameters were considered, namely, slab depth, and compressive strength of concrete. The punching shear provisions of two code of practises CSA S806 (Canadian Standards 2012) and JSCE (JSCE et al. 1997) reasonably predicted the load capacity of GFRP reinforced concrete flat slab, whereas, ACI 440 (ACI Committee 440 2015) showed very conservative load capacity prediction. On the other hand, a dynamic explicit solver in nonlinear finite element (FE) modelling is used to analyse a connection of column to concrete flat slabs reinforced with GFRP bars in terms of ultimate punching load. All FE modelling was performed in 3D with the appropriate adoption of element size and mesh. The numerical and experimental results were compared in order to evaluate the developed FE, aiming to predict the behaviour of punching shear in the concrete flat slab. In addition, a parametric study was created to explore the behaviour of GFRP reinforced concrete flat slab with three parameters, namely, concrete strength, shear load perimeter to effective depth ratio, and, flexural reinforcement ratio. It was concluded that the developed models could accurately capture the behaviour of GFRP reinforced concrete flat slabs subjected to a concentrated load. Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) is used in this research to predict punching shear strength, and the results were shown to match more closely with the experimental results. A parametric study was performed to investigate the effects of five parameters on punching shear capacity of GFRP reinforced concrete flat slab. The parametric investigation revealed that the effective depth has the most substantial impact on the load carrying capacity of the punching shear followed by reinforcement ratio, column perimeter, the compressive strength of the concrete, and, the elastic modulus of the reinforcement.

Implementing pre-stressing cables is a viable option aiming at controlling deformation and cracking of concrete flat slabs in serviceability limit state. The pre-stressing cables also contribute to punching shear capacity of the slab when they are located in vicinity of the column. The positive influence of pre-stressing cables on punching capacity of the concrete slabs is mainly due to the vertical component of inclined cables, compressive in-plane stresses and counter acting bending moments near the support region. The method presented in Eurocode 2 to determine the punching capacity of the pre-stressed concrete flat slabs considers the in-plane compressive stresses but totally neglects the effect of counter acting moments. The effect of vertical forces introduced by inclined cables is only considered when they are within the distance 2d from the face of the column. This area is called basic control area in the Eurocode 2. In this master thesis nonlinear finite element analysis is carried out to study the effect of pre-stressing cables on punching shear capacity of concrete slabs respecting the distance of cables from the face of the column. To attain this objective, the concrete damage plasticity model is implemented to model the concrete. The results indicate that until the distance of 6d from the face of the column the contribution of pre-stressing cables in punching shear capacity of slabs is significant. Furthermore, comparing the numerical results with the punching shear capacity of slabs predicted by Eurocode 2 reveals that Eurocode tremendously underestimates the punching shear capacity when the cables are located outside the basic control area.