Numerical and experimental analysis of a novel real-scale test set-up for the analysis of tensile membrane actions in concrete slabs

Research with respect to robustness of (concrete) structures gained wide interest due to the partial collapse of some case examples, such as the famous collapse of the apartment building in Ronan Point (UK) in 1968. A very important property of concrete structures with respect to robustness is the rigid connectivity with neighbouring elements. When a hyperstatic concrete slab is excessively loaded or when a certain support is lost due to an accidental event, membrane forces can be activated in order to establish a load transfer to the remaining supports, which can considerably enhance its load-carrying capacity compared to predictions obtained from small deformation theories. Thus, membrane actions can prevent a progressive collapse and increase the robustness of concrete structures.

Finite element methods can simulate the behaviour of concrete plates under these large deformations. Currently, however, different questions remain unsolved in order to properly assess the membrane actions, i.e. the influence of the constitutive laws which are implemented, the modelling of connectivity, fracture mechanical aspects under tensile membrane actions and large displacements, etc. As currently only limited research has been focussing on tensile membrane actions, a novel real-scale test set-up has been developed in order to assess these actions in real- scale concrete plates. The details of this test set-up will be explained and some experimental test results will be discussed. Finally, the results will be compared with numerical FEM analyses and the influence of different model assumptions will be evaluated.