Punching Shear Strengthening of Flat Slabs Using Ferrocement

Punching shear failure is a big issue in flat slab-column connections where the failure is a sudden and brittle. This research presents a proposed method for strengthening flat slab-column connections using ferrocement laminates. Both experimental and numerical investigations were carried out to study the effectiveness of this method in strengthening. An experimental program, ten square slabs with a concentric column was tested. Two specimens were kept as control specimens, and eight of them were strengthened with ferrocement laminates. The studied parameters were thickness of ferrocement laminates, type of wire mesh, volume fraction of reinforcement and strengthening type. The finite element software program (ANSYS 9) was used in the numerical analysis to model the strengthened slab-column connections.