Influence of Reinforcement Bar on the Performance of Reinforced Concrete Slab Under Impact Loading

The study is focused to investigate the behaviour of reinforced concrete slabs under low velocity impact loads. The experiment was performed on conventional reinforced concrete slab of size 1200 × 1200 mm with a thickness of 50 mm with reinforcement ratio of 0.23%. The slab was impacted under an impacted energy of 741.02 J through the hemispherical nose impactor with a mass of 60 kg. The measured impact force was found to be 57.37 kN. The numerical study was conducted using finite element software ABAQUS/ EXPLICIT. The material model for concrete as Concrete Damage Plasticity (CDP) model based on fracture energy criterion was used whereas the Johnson–Cook material model for steel reinforcement was adopted. The numerical simulation was performed to validate the peak impact force with the experimental results and found in good agreement with a difference of 3.73%. In order to evaluate the suitable sensitive reinforcement, the different reinforcement ratio (0.47 and 0.63%), radial reinforcement spacing (250, 150 and 100 mm c/c) and diameter of reinforcement (8∅ and 10∅) were adopted in the finite element simulations. The predicted results were compared to the experimental results and the most effective solution for reinforced concrete slab strengthening was postulated.