الفهرس 
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .Only 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Some complementary works in construction, such as electricity, telephony, water supply, and air conditioning, require special openings, especially in beams. Therefore, the main purpose of the current study is to investigate the effect of openings’ existence on the structural behavior of ferrocement I-beams with two different types of reinforcing metallic and non-metallic meshes. In addition, I-section is mainly used in steel constructions but there are two major problems in steel, which are corrosion, and low fire resistance. So that this study attempted to employ a ferrocement I-section with web openings because of the advantages of ferrocement besides its low weight. Sixteen beams are tested under a four-point loading system until failure. The tested beams had fixed dimensions of 2200 mm in length, flange dimensions of 200 mm in width and 40 mm thickness, web dimensions of 170 mm in height, and 30 mm in thickness, thus the total height of the sample is 250 mm. The beams are divided into four groups according to the type of meshes used as reinforcement. Each group contains a control I-beam with no openings and three beams with one, two, and three openings. To keep a constant reinforcement weight, the four groups are, respectively, reinforced with three layers of welded steel meshes, two layers of expanded metal meshes, two layers of tensar meshes, and eight layers of gavazzi meshes. Experimental results are then compared to analytical models using (ABAQUS/Explicit) programs. It was observed that beams with no opening, one, and two openings; beams with gavazzi meshes had the greatest ultimate load compared to the other tested beams while for beams with three openings, beams with expanded metal meshes had the greatest ultimate loads. In addition, beams with three openings showed a lower ultimate load, deflection, ductility ratio, energy absorption, and load-to-weight ratio than the other beams with the same type of reinforcing meshes. Placing three openings in beams with dimensions of 10×5 cm (two of these openings are approximately 10 cm apart from each edge while the third opening is located at mid-span) reduced the load-to-weight ratio by about 20.7%, 12.9%, 8.2%, and 23.8% compared to the beams with no openings for welded beams, expanded beams, tensar beams, and gavazzi beams respectively. The control welded steel beam with no opening recorded a maximum ductility ratio and energy absorption among all the tested beams, while the gavazzi beam with three openings obtained a minimum ductility ratio and energy absorption. The average percentage of the first crack loads of the tested beams between the experimental results and the numerical results is 5.5%, while the average percentage of the ultimate loads of the tested beams between the experimental results and the numerical results is 5%. In addition, the average percentage of the maximum deflection of the tested beams between the experimental results and the numerical results is 5.8%. Therefore, there is a good agreement between experimental and numerical results.