Description
Two-way slabs are vulnerable to two-way punching shear which may cause catastrophic failures. Furthermore, over the recent past, the trend has been set to use construction waste as recycled aggregates in structural concrete. Therefore, the work presented herein, numerically investigates in detail, the behaviour of the two-way reinforced concrete slabs, cast with both natural aggregate concrete and recycled aggregate concrete, under punching shear. The work also focuses on simulating the behaviour of such slabs strengthened and/or retrofitted with carbon fibre reinforced polymers strips. Based on the detailed numerical investigation, it was observed that the use of carbon fibre reinforced polymers increased the overall stiffness of slabs strengthened with carbon fibre reinforced polymers strips compared to the slabs without carbon fibre reinforced polymers strips for both natural aggregate concrete and recycled aggregate concrete slabs. Spacing of the carbon fibre reinforced polymers strips from the face of the column was also found to be effective in reducing the deflections of the slabs at similar load levels. For both natural aggregate concrete and recycled aggregate concrete specimens, the influence of slab thickness and concrete compressive strength was observed to be significant on the behaviour of the slabs.
