Prefabricated Composite Flooring Systems with Normal and Lightweight Concretes

The use of lightweight concrete in structural applications for the sustainable design of composite slabs require the revision of today's flooring systems and the development of more efficient shear connectors. This paper studies a novel prefabricated and shallow steel‐concrete composite flooring system which 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. This paper includes the work of 2 full‐scale push‐out tests aimed at investigating the longitudinal shear behaviour of the new shear connection system (made of shear studs and steel dowels) when the normal concrete is replaced by lightweight and ultra‐lightweight concrete.