Punching behavior of biaxial hollow slabs

The invention of a new kind of hollow slab with plastic balls as hollow bodies entailed the necessity to investigate its structural behavior. Because of its main field of application as a flat slab, the punching shear capacity is one of the most interesting properties of this slab. To investigate the influence of the cavities on the punching behavior, tests were carried out at the Institute for Concrete Structures in Darmstadt. In addition to these tests nonlinear computations using the Finite Element Method were performed. The computations allowed parametric studies to get a better understanding of the structural behavior without doing further expensive tests. Finally, necessary modifications of existing design recommendations according to the German design code DIN 1045 [1] were developed.