MECHANICAL CHARACTERIZATION OF TRC PRECAST FAÇADE SANDWICH PANEL FOR ENERGY RETROFITTING OF EXISTING BUILDINGS

Residential and commercial buildings are responsible of a large energy consumption, both for the heating in winter and the air conditioning in summer. Standards have introduced severe limits to guarantee the energy saving in new buildings; however, there is a significant need of retrofitting existing buildings, because of their large impact on the real estate in continents like Europe. In the framework of a FP7 European project, a multilayer prefabricated façade panel is proposed as an outdoor solution. It is characterized by an internal EPS layer, 100 mm thick and by two external layers made of textile reinforced concrete (TRC), 12 mm thick. The insulating material is also used to transfer the shear between the external TRC layers. The maximum size of the panel is 1.50 x 3.30 m2; the panel height is properly chosen in order to fasten it to the frame concrete beams. In the paper the design of the panel and the results of tests performed on full scale panels are resumed. The panels were punctually fastened on the corners through suitable anchors and were loaded by means of a distributed load (considering wind pressure and suction as the main load acting on the panel). The panels were also tested according to a 4 point-bending set-up up to collapse to check their ultimate limit state on full-size prototypes.