Flexural Behaviour of an Innovative Floor System Utilizing Intelligent Structural Panels

The increase in demand for smart buildings has required engineers to produce innovative structural members that better facilitate the hardware and software connectivity intrinsic to smart buildings. An example of these innovative members is the Intelligent Structural Panel (ISP), developed by Stephenson Engineering Inc., Toronto, Ontario, to be used as a flooring system in smart buildings. The ISP presents a new approach to achieving a sandwich panel system. This paper aims at examining the flexural behaviour of this panel. The paper starts by providing details about two validation cases, chosen to ensure that the utilized finite element modelling technique can predict the deformation behaviour as well as all potential failure modes of the panel. A simple approach to predict weld failure was adopted and validated. Then, an ISP panel, consisting of top and bottom 6 mm plates separated by 25 mm-diameter studs, was modelled and analysed. The panel was examined considering service loads and factored loads. Then, the load was incrementally increased until one of the panel components failed. Results of the numerical model show that the ISP panel can be designed to achieve the serviceability and strength design criteria.