Experimental and numerical evaluation of mechanical behaviour of composite structural insulated panels

Composite structural insulated panels (CSIPs) are novel prefabricated elements for structural applications. Panels under consideration are made from glass-fibre reinforced magnesia cement boards as facesheets and expanded polystyrene foam (EPS) as a core. Quasi-static full-scale and model bending tests under monotonic loading were performed to recognize mechanical properties of CSIPs in flexure. In addition, tensile, compressive, shear and flexural small-scale tests were performed in order to establish material properties of composing materials. A FEM computational model was then created in commercial code ABAQUS in order to predict the behaviour of CSIPs. The main aim of this paper is to present the results of numerical simulations of the selected small-and full-scale tests and to compare them with the experimental data in order to validate the presented FEM model.