Behavior of RPC Reinforced Wall Panels under Compression Action

Abstract

In the present work, experimental and numerical programs were conducted to investigate the compression action behavior of reinforced Reactive Powder Concrete (RPC) wall panels. Twelve different panels were tested and analyzed using the ANSYS software. All the panels were identical in dimensions, silica fume content, cement/sand ratio, and water/cement ratio. They were cast using five different concrete mixes, except the non-RPC mix. An experimental parametric study was followed to show the effect of volumetric steel fibers ratio, reinforcement ratio, hole size, hole location and hole shape on the general structural behavior, the mid-point deflection and the ultimate load capacity of the wall panels. A maximum enhancement by 86.2% in experimental ultimate load capacity was noticed for the panel having 2.0% steel fibers compared to the control panel. Also, the ultimate load capacity of the panels showed an almost linearly decreasing relationship with the size of the square hole centered at the center of the panel, while shifting the same original hole from the panel’s center nearer to the edge produced a negligible effect on the panel’s ultimate load capacity. Another important conclusion was that choosing a hole of square shape may be more critical, compared to a circular one, in such a wall panel. Finally, the use of ANSYS with a certain choice of the elements representing the concrete and the reinforcements gave consistently good agreement with the experimental values in terms of the mid-point deflection and the ultimate load capacity which corroborated the possible use of ANSYS, confidently, for further analyses of those panels with little need to further actual testing.