PREPARED BY: KETAN DHAMELIYA

En No:- 120070720010
Department of Structural Engineering
BVM Engineering College, Vidyanagar.
HISTORY OF HOLLOW CORE SLAB
BUBBLE DECK TECHNOLOGY
COMPONENTS
BENEFITS

FLOW OF PRESENTATION..
How to Install ??
Composition
Bending stiffness & Deflection
Shear

SITE INSTALLATION

Temporary Support Propping on parallel beams

Placing Elements Semi pre-cast elements mechanically
lifted into position

Joint Reinforcement Insert loose bottom splice bars
and tie top mesh across joints between elements

Perimeter shuttering Fix shuttering to bottom pre-cast
concrete layer & tie to top mesh reinforcement

Soffit shuttering Prop plywood across joints
between element bays and between elements & columns




Concreting Pour, vibrate and aggregate in-situ concrete

Temporary works Remove, typically after 3 5 days,
according to specific site advice

Finishing
Typical arrangement of
props and propping
beams
Loaded trailers
arriving on site
Lifting
element
into
position
Aligning bubbles
between elements
Pouring, Vibrating
& Floating Site
Concrete
Several methods have been introduced during the last
decades, but with very limited success, due to major
problems with shear capacity and fire resistance as well as
impractical execution.

Most attempts have consisted of laying blocks of a less
heavy material like expanded polystyrene between the
bottom and top reinforcement.

But the use will always be very limited due to reduced
resistances towards shear, local punching and fire.

which is why the use of these systems has never gained
acceptance and they are only used in a limited number of
projects
The voids are positioned in the middle of the cross section,
where concrete has limited effect, while maintaining solid
sections in top and bottom where high stresses can exist.
Hence, the slab is fully functional with regards to both
positive and negative bending.
In principle, Bubble Deck slabs acts like solid slabs.
Designing is consequently like for solid slabs, just
with less load corresponding to the reduced
amount of concrete. Thorough investigations
according to Euro codes(EC2) are made at
universities in Germany, Netherlands and Denmark,
concluding that a Bubble Deck slab acts like as a
solid slab.
Only top compressive portion and bottom
reinforcing steel of a solid concrete slab contribute
to flexure stiffness in bending.

Bubble deck removes concrete from the center of
the flexural slab and replaces with hollow HDPE
spheres. It is having equal bending stiffness as solid
slab.

The Eindhoven University of Technology and the
Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands
have performed experiments on the bending
stiffness of Voided Slabs.

They focused on the smallest and largest
depths of slabs,230mm and 455mm.
But technical university of Denmark also
carried out test on stiffness of bubble deck
slab. they verified the result and they found
out, for same strength, bubble deck has 87%
of bending stiffness of similar solid slab but
only 66% concrete volume due to HDPE
spheres.

As a result, deflection was higher in bubble deck.

However, significant lower dead weight
compensated for the slightly reduced stiffness and
therefore bubble deck gave higher carrying
capacity.

As, reduced permanent load positively affects long
term response in the serviceability limit state
design, which governs crack propagation.

It has been concluded that adding a minimum
amount of extra reinforcing steel would satisfy the
criteria.
The main difference between a solid slab and a
voided, voided slab refers to shear resistance. Due
to the reduced concrete volume, the shear
resistance will also be reduced.
The reduced shear resistance will not lead to
problems, as plastic bubbles, the shear resistance
of a BubbleDeck slab is greatly redused compared
to a solid slab.
From theoretical models, the shear strength of the
voided slab was determined to be 60-80% of a solid
slab with the same depth.
In calculations, a reduction factor of 0.6 is
used on the shear capacity for all bubble
deck slab.

This guarantees a large safety margin. Areas
with high shear loads need therefore a
special attention, e.g. around columns. That
is solved by omitting a few balls in the
critical area around the columns, therefore
giving full shear capacity.
Professor Kleinmann at the Eindhoven
University of Technology in the Netherlands,
performed physical shear tests to compare a
solid slab with BubbleDeck slab.