Concrete is nowadays the most widely used construction material. Its main drawbacks are a significant self-weight and the use of non-renewable resources. Moreover, it provides rather low thermal insulation properties, thermal storage capacity and acoustic insulation.Wood-Cement Compound (WCC) materials mix a hydraulic binder with wood aggregates (e.g. sawdust). They have been used since the beginning of the 20 th century and they are currently used as non-structural finishing layers for their good properties in thermal, acoustic and fire resistance. Different pourable mixtures have been developed and tested (Macchi and Zwicky 2016). The most promising recipes have been used to develop structural elements (here, slabs) where WCC has been placed in the compressive layer of a timber-WCC composite section in order to increase stiffness but also provide further building-physical and ecological performances.The main application potential of WCCs lies in prefabricated elements for dry, modular building construction. Due to its composition, mechanical strength is significantly lower than for regular concrete, for example. However, other advantages are expected, such as acoustic and fire insulation. The goal here is to verify if this material can be used as a multi-functional solution for slab elements. Thus, an eco-balance investigation is also presented to compare WCC slabs to more classical solutions in terms of energy consumption.
FULL-SCALE TESTS ON TIMBER-WCC SLABS
Test specimensThe test campaign regroups six different single-span slabs. All specimens have an 8 m span and 0.76 m width. Different configurations have been tested, Figure 1 shows their geometry. The
This paper investigates the mechanical contribution of an innovative coating applied on masonry wallettes compared to a traditional one. In both cases, the multifunctional coatings were insulating coatings intended for thermal refurbishment, but they could also be used to retrofit masonry. Uncoated specimens as well as coated ones were submitted to pushover tests to establish the strength gain. URM walls experienced brittle failures while the coated walls exhibited significant strength gains and strong ductility. The corresponding finite element models were developed. The behaviour of the URM walls was reproduced accurately in terms of strength and failure pattern. Models involving the coatings were used to partially retrieve the behaviour and to highlight the issues of a continuum approach.
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