Development of a foam-filled steel web sandwich panel for the rehabilitation of timber floors

Abstract

Lightweight sandwich panels offer a prominent solution for the rehabilitation of timber floors. This paper addresses the development of a solution capable of continuous production for a foam-filled steel web sandwich panel for floor rehabilitation. The newly designed flooring solution is tested in full-scale quasi-static flexural campaigns. The tests validate the analytical design’s compliance with Ultimate limit state (ULS) and Serviceability limit state (SLS) requirements. Furthermore, the flexural behaviour is compared with analytical predictions for thin-walled members according to the effective width method, described in Eurocode 3. Different effective cross-section design assumptions are assessed to allow an accurate prediction of the panel’s response.