Testing a Prefabricated Ultra-Shallow Composite Flooring System with Lightweight Concrete and Shear Studs

This paper presents an experimental investigation on a recently developed prefabricated shallow steel-concrete composite flooring system composed with lightweight concretes. The novel flooring system is consisted of two main structural components: two C-channel steel beams and a partially encased concrete floor. The concrete floor, which is in the form of T-ribbed slab sections, was constructed using three types of concrete (reinforced normal concrete, reinforced lightweight aggregate concrete, and reinforced ultra-lightweight aggregate concrete), and the steel edge beams which partially encase the floor slab and provide clear and straight finish edges. Three full-scale push-out tests were conducted to investigate the effect of the lightweight concrete on the longitudinal shear behaviour of the new shear connection system, made of web-welded shear stud connectors. It was observed that specimens with lightweight concretes demonstrated additional ductility when compared with specimen using normal concrete, and the failure mode of the shear studs alters. It is confirmed that the specimen with normal concrete has reached a higher failure shear load.