Adoption of Precast Hollow Core Panels for External Walls of Multistorey Buildings

Abstract

Due to the increasing population and reduced availability of usable lands for construction activities, many residential and commercial buildings are becoming medium- to high-rise structures globally. Complementing this trend, the Sri Lankan construction industry has incorporated precast products as core elements in several projects due to their better performance, enhanced quality, elevated control, reduced leading time of construction, adaptability of novel technologies in construction and controlled material processing during manufacturing. During the past decade, precast wall panels became one of the popular precast panel elements satisfying both load-bearing and non-load bearing structural requirements in Sri Lanka. Originally, precast wall panels were intended to be used as internal partition wall panels, which are not expected to resist loading nor undergo significant deformations. This paper focuses on verifying the usability of such precast panels as external wall panels in multi-storey buildings, where their load resistance is investigated under lateral wind loads and vertical deformations due to column shortening effects. In addition, using the shape optimization technique in-built into ABAQUS CAE advanced finite element software, a better layout for the precast wall is also proposed and their performance is compared with the current standard layout under similar loading and boundary conditions. It was found out that the optimized precast hollow core panels are 19.88% less in volume with similar performance and can be used as external wall panels to withstand wind induced lateral loads in multistorey buildings. The recommendations on how many panels shall be used in a single assembly are also presented.