Prefabricated floor panels composed of fiber reinforced concrete and a steel substructure

This paper reports on a study on prefabricated composite and modular floor deck panels composed of relatively thin fiber reinforced concrete slabs connected to steel substructures. The study focuses on the design, manufacturing, structural improvements and behavior of the floor systems during loading at the serviceability and ultimate limit states. The composite construction concept offers flexibility in the assembly process, the ability to adapt to various load and boundary requirements, and efficient utilization of material properties that result in a light weight prefabricated structural element.The activities described in this paper are an extension of previous work where composite floor panels composed of light gauge steel joists were integrally cast with a thin-walled Engineered Cementitious Composite (ECC) slab. The main focus of the present study was to revise and improve the design detailing of these integrally cast deck panels and to modify them by providing individually cast anchor points in the precast ECC slab, which are subsequently used to attach a steel truss substructure.Full-scale experiments were carried out to verify the structural behavior of the integrally cast panels and the modular panels with various substructure configurations along with comparison to analytical and numerical results.