Plastic fibres as the only reinforcement for flat suspended slabs: Parametric study and design considerations

The use of constitutive equations from the standards to model flat suspended slabs reinforced only with plastic fibres leads to an overestimation of the experimental response of these elements. To address such problem, a parametric study is conducted. In this study, the influence of the parameters from the constitutive equations on the structural behaviour of the slabs is analysed and the ones that provide the best fit with the experimental results are found through a non-linear regression. Based on this analysis, the existence of a network effect was identified and a design philosophy for suspended slabs reinforced only with plastic fibres is proposed. Thereby, this paper represents a meaningful contribution to provide a step towards the development of a rational and design-oriented constitutive model for real-scale hyperstatic slabs-type elements.