Experimental and numerical study on structural behaviour of tyre-bale sandwich wall under different loading conditions

ABSTRACT This study presents the structural behaviour of tyre-bale sandwich wall under four-point bending and punching shear load. The research entails two stages: (a) full-scale experimental testing and (b) and numerical analysis of a 3D finite element modelling (FEM). In the first stage, two tyre-bale sandwich walls are tested experimentally in flexural bending to investigate the structural behaviour in terms of ultimate load, vertical deflection, strain distribution on the concrete surface, deflected profile, crack pattern and tyre-bale compressibility. The second stage consisted of three phases: (a) validation of the material model and assembly of different parts by comparing load-deflection curve and concrete damage in tension, (b) calibration of punching shear load and boundary conditions using previous experimental research data and (c) study ultimate load and failure mode under punching shear in tyre-bale sandwich wall. The results of the proposed 3D FEM model showed good agreement with experimental work and predicted the failure mechanism with reasonable accuracy. The calibrated model can be used to further investigate the factors affecting the structural behaviour of tyre-bale sandwich walls under different loading conditions. Finally, the strength of reinforced concrete member was confirmed using yield line theory, which showed a fair agreement with the experimental values.