Behavior of one way reinforced concrete slabs with styropor blocks

The problem of reducing the self-weight of reinforced concrete structures is very important issue. There are two approaches which may be used to reduced member weight. The first is tackled through reducing the cross sectional area by using voids and the second through using light weight materials. Reducing the weight of slabs is very important as it constitutes the effective portion of dead loads in the structural building. Eleven slab specimens was casted in this research. The slabs are made one way though using two simple supports. The tested specimens comprised three reference solid slabs and eight styropor block slabs having (23% and 29%) reduction in weight. The voids in slabs were made using styropor at the ineffective concrete zones in resisting the tensile stresses. All slab specimens have the dimensions ($1100{\times}600{\times}120mm$) except one solid specimens has depth 85 mm (to give reduction in weight of 29% which is equal to the styropor block slab reduction). Two loading positions or cases (A and B) (as two-line monotonic loads) with shear span to effective depth ratio of (a/d=3, 2) respectively, were used to trace the structural behavior of styropor block slab. The best results are obtained for styropor block slab strengthened by minimum shear reinforcement with weight reduction of (29%). The increase in the strength capacity was (8.6% and 5.7%) compared to the solid slabs under loading cases A and B respectively. Despite the appearance of cracks in styropor block slab with loads lesser than those in the solid slab, the development and width of cracks in styropor block slab is significantly restricted as a result of presence a mesh of reinforcement in upper concrete portion.