الفهرس 
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTIONOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Ferrocement is one of the relatively new cementitious composite
considered as a construction material. It is a thin, lightweight composite
material which has layers of steel meshes as the tensile reinforcement
encased by cement mortar. These panels possess high strength-weight
ratio and extreme bending ability. However, due to the small thickness
and labor intensive production method of the panel, they are not accepted
worldwide, which gave rise to the concept of ferrocement composite
plates, which frequently used in modern lightweight construction due to
their low thermal conductivity and high strength-to-weight ratio.
Ferrocement composite plates typically consist of two thin, high strength
and density outside face sheets known as skin separated by a thick layer
made of low strength and density material called core. One type of core
material called (Styrofoam) was employed to provide the core material
between the two skin ferrocement layers which has density 33 kg/m3 and
20mm thick. Twelve ferrocement composite plates which having the
dimension of 500 x 500 and 50 mm thick were cast and tested simply
supported along its four sides and subjected to central flexural loadings
until failure to determine the behavior of the composite plates under
flexure loads. The main objective of this work is to study the effect of
using different number of wire mesh layers and steel bars on the flexural
strength of ferrocement composite plates. Increasing the number of
welded and expanded steel mesh layers in the ferrocement composites
delaying the occurrence of the first cracking as result of increasing the
specific surface area of steel meshes, which leading to higher bond area.
A simple computer program was used to predict the behavior of these
plates. The experimental test results were analyzed and compared with the
theoretical investigation . The obtained results reached emphasized good deformation characteristics, high ultimate load, high ductility, energy
absorption properties could be used with great economic advantages.