Ferrocement sandwich walls

This paper describes three research projects on ferrocement sandwich walls at the Department of Structural Engineering, University of Sao Paulo at Sao Carlos. They are: a) flexural and eccentric compression tests of precast panels with ferrocement skin layers and polyurethane foam core for a housing system; b) composite behavior of Monolite T System wall strips made offerrocement skin layers and polystyrene foam core; and c) precast panels made with ferrocement skin layers reinforced with continuous polypropylene fibers and polystyrene foam core. The following conclusions were drawn: a) precast panels with polyurethane foam core, where only the polyurethane core makes the connection between the two mortar layers, present good behavior, fully satisfying the service conditions; b) panels of polystyrene core and ferrocement layers of the Monolite T System present a certain degree of composite action, due to the steel connections and the polystyrene foam core, that can be enough for several applications where ultimate bending moments are critical; and c) the results of the last project indicate that the use of continuous polypropylene fibers as reinforcement is technically viable, providing safety against brittle failure to the sandwich panel.