PREDICTION OF COMPRESSIVE STRENGTH OF GLASS FIBER REINFORCED GYPSUM WALL PANELS

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Ph. D Research Scholar, Civil Eng. Dept., Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, Chennai-600036, India.

2 Professor, Civil Eng. Dept., Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, Chennai-600036, India.

Abstract

Glass fiber reinforced gypsum (GFRG) walls are relatively new building materials
that have been developed in the last decade in Australia and are now being used in
many other countries as structural walls. The GFRG wall panels are hollow panels
made of phosphogypsum (an industrial by-product) and reinforced with glass fibers.
These panels (120 mm thick) have rectangular cavities. With the increasing use of
GFRG wall panels, structural design guidelines, based on proper studies have
become necessary. In this paper, a method is proposed to predict the compressive
strength of GFRG wall panels, including slenderness effects and non-linear stressstrain
behavior of the material. These results also been validated with experimental
results obtained from tests conducted and limited number of experimental results
available in literature. It is seen that the proposed method gives more accurate
results than the existing methods.

Keywords