Experimental Investigation on Behavior of joints in Reinforced EPS Core Panel Construction System

Abstract

Reinforced EPS panel construction system has become a very efficient, safe and economic construction system in the modern times. These panels are being used both as load bearing and non-load bearing elements. With its increasing popularity it has caught various researcher’s attention across the world in many areas. The research on joints or connections in the EPS panel construction is one of the areas which is needed to be studied. A very minor amount of work has been done in the area of joints in EPS panel construction system. This study is completely based on determining the strength, stiffness and ductility of the joints in EPS construction against a loading which develops a pure moment in the joint and with different configurations for different types of connections. A comparison between the connections tested in lab and wall-floor panel connection in buildings comprising EPS core panel system is drawn in the end, to check the efficacy of the different joints tested. The comparison yielded good results as the moment capacity values of all connection specimens with additional configurations are found to be near about the moment capacity of a connection considering a full scale EPS slab panel, which justify the significance of this study.