Experimental study of short- and long-term behaviour of composite steel-concrete slab

This paper presents an experimental program designed to examine the short- and long-term behaviour of composite steel-concrete slabs under sustained loads. The test program consisted of eight slabs for the long-term test and four slabs for the short-term test. For the short-term test, the slabs were loaded until they reached their ultimate capacity. As for the long-term test, the deflections, strains and the cracking behaviour of the slab specimens were monitored over a period of 710 days. The primary observations are: (1) the deflection of the composite steel-concrete slabs without profiled sheeting increase quite significantly over time due to creep and shrinkage and (2) greater cracking of concrete occurred in the mid span lab under sustained service loads due to the combined effects of concrete shrinkage and sustained load.