Characterization of the Bond between Textile Reinforced Cement and Extruded Polystyrene by Shear Tests

Loadbearing sandwich panels used as wall elements are a promising development since they combine structural and energy efficiency. Composite behaviour needs to be ensured so that the sandwich panel works as one element under a flexural load (meaning that the shear forces due to bending are transferred from one face to the other). To assure this full composite behaviour, an investigation of the bond strength between the faces and the core of the sandwich panel is necessary. Therefore, two different bond test set-ups were performed on sandwich panels with Textile Reinforced Cement (TRC) faces and an Extruded Polystyrene (XPS) insulating foam core. The two bond test set-ups were compared and revealed that one of the set-ups showed a combination of bond and shear failure of the core so that a clear conclusion on the bond strength couldn’t be obtained. The second set-up showed clear bond failure and gave a good estimation of the bond strength between TRC and XPS.