Behaviour of Lightweight Concrete Wall Panel under Axial Loading: Experimental and Numerical Investigation toward Sustainability in Construction Industry

Awareness of sustainability in construction has led to the utilization of waste material such as oil palm shell (OPS) in concrete production. The feasibility of OPS as alternative aggregates in concrete has been widely studied at the material level. Meanwhile, nonlinear concrete material properties are not taken into account in the conventional concrete wall design equations, resulting in underestimation of lightweight concrete’s wall axial capacity. Against these sustainability and technical contexts, this research investigated the buckling behavior of OPS-based lightweight self-compacting concrete (LWSCC) wall. Failure mode, load-deflection responses, and ultimate strength were assessed experimentally. Numerical models have been developed and validated against experimental results. Parametric studies were conducted to study the influence of parameters like slenderness ratio, eccentricity, compressive strength, and elastic modulus. The results showed that the axial strength of concrete wall was very much dependent on these parameters. A generalized semi-empirical design equation, based on equivalent concrete stress block and modified by mathematical regression, has been proposed. The ratio of average calculated results to test results of the proposed equation, when compared to ACI 318, AS 3600, and Eurocode 2 equations, are respectively improved from 0.36, 0.31, and 0.42 to 0.97. This research demonstrates that OPS-based LWSCC concrete can be used for structural axial components and that the equation developed can serve a good guideline for its design, which could encourage automation and promote sustainability in the construction industry.

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