Development of precast lightweight foamed concrete sandwich panel (PLFP) with double shear truss connector: an overview

Abstract

Urbanization in many cities needs to adopt modern and innovative techniques in the construction industry to balance the supply and demand in housing issues. To address the issue, there is a need to look for alternative solutions and provide affordable quality housing. Therefore, innovative construction method such as Industrialized Building System (IBS) needs to be adopted to move away from conventional building construction technique in order to meet the demand. Precast Sandwich panel is one of the alternative IBS that could meet and fulfil this target. Previous research had shown that this panel had a potential to provide possible solution to housing problems especially in low and medium cost housing sector. This paper presents findings from previous research in this field especially on the panel's materials properties, structural behaviours and empirical expression to determine its ultimate load carrying capacity. It is hoped the overview on this topic could be used as guidance for future research on developing a lightweight sandwich panel system in low to medium rise building.