Experimental investigation of a novel concrete-timber floor panel system with digitally fabricated FRP-timber hollow core component

Concrete-timber composite floor systems have become increasingly popular due to their high sustainability and ease of construction. This paper presents a novel lightweight concrete-timber floor panel system with a fibre reinforced polymer-timber waffle-shaped core between the concrete and timber layers. Digital fabrication techniques and computer-numerical control machines were used in the core component fabrication, resulting in ease of fabrication, high accuracy, and streamlined manufacture process. Four 2.25?m span floor panels were manufactured and tested under four-point bending to investigate their flexural behaviour. Results show that the proposed system has an excellent flexural capacity, and demonstrated a high ductility before ultimate failure. Comparison shows the proposed system outperformed the equivalent reinforced concrete and hybrid timber-concrete panels regarding weight specific moment capacity. The consistent flexural behaviour of the tested specimens also proved the effective quality control from CNC manufacturing. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.