Punching shear behaviour of RC flat slabs incorporating recycled coarse aggregates and crumb rubber

This paper presents experimental, analytical and numerical investigations to evaluate the punching shear strength of concrete slabs incorporating a combination of recycled coarse aggregate (RCA) and crumb rubber (CR). Therefore, twelve different concrete mixes were designed with various substitution ratios of RCA and CR as a partial replacement of natural coarse aggregate (NCA) and fine aggregate (FA), respectively. Four substitution ratios of RCA (0%, 25%, 50% and 100%) by NCA and three substitution ratios of CR (0%, 10% and 20%) by FA were considered. Twelve simply supported two-way RC slabs with dimensions of 1000 × 1000 × 100 mm were cast and tested. The experimental programme was divided into two stages. The first and second stages were respectively conducted to evaluate the mechanical properties and the punching shear behaviour of concrete slabs incorporating a combination of RCA and CR. Experimental results show that the combination of RCA and CR negatively affects the mechanical properties of concrete. The substitution ratios of rubber content had a more significant effect on the reduction of the concrete strengths than the RCA content. The punching shear strength, stiffness and toughness of RC slabs incorporating RCA and CR decreased with increasing CR and RCA contents. Based on the experimental results, a combination of 25% RCA and 10% CR is the optimum substitution ratios that can be used on the concrete mixture, as it has a minor effect on the punching shear strength of concrete slab. The predictions of five approaches, namely ACI 318–2014, ECP 203, Euro −2, BS8110 and CSA A23.3, were compared with the experimental results. Finally, nonlinear element analysis (ANSYS) was conducted to verify the experimental results with numerical ones.