Flexural behavior of stratified reinforced concrete: construction, testing, analysis, and design

Abstract

Stratified concrete poses a promisingalternative for construction. Its fresh and hardenedproperties have been studied at the material level;however, structural behavior in steel reinforcedspecimens has not been studied. This paper focuseson the flexural behavior of eight stratified reinforcedconcrete (SRC) specimens representing slices from aslab or non-bearing wall. Specimens with twostratified concrete designs and three steel ratioswere tested and compared to estimates from a fiberelement numerical model and rectangular stressblockdesign methods from ACI 318 and Eurocode2. The results suggest that SRC has similar damagemodes as ordinary reinforced concrete (ORC). Thefiber element model accurately estimated the measuredbehavior, while ACI 318 and Eurocode 2differed from the experimental results by 25%.These prediction accuracies are similar to those forORC. Therefore, the flexural design of SRC can bedone using both fiber element and rectangular stressblockapproaches.