This paper presents a study on the structural performance of a modified shear-head assembly for edge steel column embedded in reinforced concrete slab. The structural performance was investigated in terms of punching shear capacity of the reinforced concrete flat slab. The study consisted of a laboratory punching shear test on the contra-flexure bound slab of dimension 1060mm × 1250mm by 130mm thick in a reactant test frame using a 500kN load cell. Results of the experimental study was validated using finite element based numerical method. Both experimental and numerical results show that increase in tensile strength of concrete, increases punching shear capacity of the connection. It was also observed that punching shear failure of the connection depended largely on concrete shear strength. This study has also revealed that punching shear occurs when concrete shear strength is reached, irrespective of the robustness of the shear-head connection.

Reinforcement of structural timber members with fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) rods offers merits over that of the conventional steel type. In recent times, near surface mounted (NSM) FRP reinforcement with timber has emerged as a promising alternative for reinforcing timber structures in both flexural and shear loading configurations. Previous investigations have shown that NSM FRP reinforcement technique has higher bond performance than externally bonded equivalents because it (NSM FRP technique) is able to utilise the full capacity of the FRP materials. In spite of these merits, the investigations and the use of this innovative technique are limited. In this paper, an experiment was conducted to investigate the bond characteristics and performance of NSM basalt FRP reinforcement with solid timber structures. In order to predict the performance of the reinforced beam structures, unreinforced control timber members of the same timber characteristics were tested. The results showed that the average bond capacity of the NSM FRP reinforced members was 16% higher than the corresponding unreinforced beams.

This paper presents a numerical investigation on the flexural performance of a novel cementitious reinforced GEM-TECH material using finite element method. A discrete nonlinear FE model using the commercial software ANSYS was employed to model a steel-reinforced GEM-TECH beam. Element SOLID65 was used to model the cementitious material while LINK180 element was used to model the reinforcing bars and stirrups. For model validation, FEA results and crack plots were compared to those obtained from the experimental results of five reinforced GEM-TECH beams: three beams designed with target density of 1810 kg/m3 and two beams with target density of 1600 kg/m3. Both load-deflection plots and the failure mode crack plots predicted by the FE model were in good agreement with the experimental results.