الفهرس 
IntroductionOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
 |  | from | 103 |  |  |
| | | from | 103 | | |
Abstract
Concrete walls are one of the most important elements of concrete structures. Concrete
walls are used in resisting both vertical and horizontal loads. Despite the importance of
concrete walls, they are considered as costly concrete elements in terms of their own
reinforcing components (whether longitudinal or transverse steel bars). Concrete walls
also have heavy own weight which affect the total weight of the structures. Producing
lightweight concrete walls using ferrocement technology and using durable and
enhanced materials could enhance the mechanical behavior of concrete walls and
provide new solutions for different construction purposes.
This work aims to study the structural behavior of ferrocement lightweight walls in
terms of ultimate failure loads, first crack loads, energy absorptions, ductility ratios,
serviceability loads and cracking behavior with using different steel meshes
experimentally and theoretically. The work was established in two stages:
• The experimental first stage was designed for producing reinforced lightweight
walls which reinforced with various types of wire meshes and contains 4 light
bricks having dimensions of 400 mm width, 200 mm length and 40 mm
thickness with interspaces to investigate the effect of selected parameters on the
behavior of ferrocement wall bearing elements. The selected parameters
included: casting and testing of nine specimens having the dimensions of 100
mm x 500 mm x 1000 mm under distributed compression loadings. The test
specimens were designated into four groups depend on type and number of
reinforcing steels meshes in each ferrocement layer, and the pattern of steel
reinforcement according to types of reinforcing steel mesh, welded wire meshes
, and expanded wire meshes.
• A theoretical NLFEA second study was executed using Ansys2019-R1. The
theoretical study aims to produce a proper simulation for the experimental study
by analyzing and comparing the results of the theoretical with that of the
experimental ones.
The lightweight ferrocement walls that reinforced with welded and expanded wire
meshes have showed enhancement ratios in all mechanical properties with respect to
control wall W1 with no mesh, that was due to the superior advantages of using
ferrocement technology. Using expanded steel meshes showed higher ratios of
enhancement in mechanical properties with respect to welded steel meshes, that was
due to the bigger diameter of the expanded steel mesh. It is interesting to note that
combining welded and expanded steel wire meshes showed superior mechanical
properties. Using welded steel meshes showed better cracking behavior and higher
reduction ratios in cracks widths than using expanded steel meshes. The NLFEA
models that used to compare the experimental wall specimens have showed a good
agreement with approximately ratio of 88 %. eywords: Ferrocement; Lightweight walls; Cracking; Ductility; Finite element analysis; Steel Meshes; Expanded steel mesh; Welded steel mesh.