Experimental investigation on the fire resistance of cast‐in‐situ hollow core concrete slabs constructed using filler boxes and an assembly box system

Abstract

This paper presents the results of four fire tests on full-scale cast-in-situ, hollow core concrete slabs, constructed using filler boxes and an assembly box system. Experimental data include the furnace temperature, temperature distribution in the slab, and vertical and horizontal deflections during the heating and cooling phases, as well as observed cracking patterns. The test data indicate that the tested hollow slabs with plastic filler boxes have good performance in case of standard fire exposure with small vertical deflections and high deflection recovery in long duration testing. For slabs with assembly box systems serious spalling was observed, resulting in integrity failure after 69 minutes in one of the tests. Nevertheless, load bearing capacity was maintained for all tests. The tests highlight the importance of the boundary conditions and the arrangement of the filler system on the fire behavior of the hollow slabs, particularly with respect to the observed cracking, spalling, and structural integrity.