Experiments to establish the loadbearing behaviour of lightweight sandwich beams using textile-reinforced and expanded polystyrene concrete

Textile-reinforced concrete (TRC) is a combination of small-grain high-performance concrete (HPC) and high-strength textile reinforcement. TRC enables thin layers and has high tensile and compressive strengths. In this paper, TRC was used for the face layers and combined with a core of lightweight expanded polystyrene concrete (EPC) to create lightweight sandwich beams without special joint reinforcement to connect the layers. The experimental testing of the loadbearing behaviour of this kind of sandwich beam, along with the influence of the shear span-to-depth ratio (a/d) as observed during three- and four-point bending tests, will be summarized. The failure behaviour of the sandwich beams is influenced by the shear span-to-depth ratio, the type of bending test and the tensile capacity of the TRC layer. A diagonal tension failure occurred in experimental beams with 2.6 ≤ a/d ≤ 5.2 in three-point bending tests and 3.1 ≤ a/d ≤ 4.1 in four-point tests. The shear strength of the beams could be conservatively estimated according to the current European standards.