ABSTRACT
Composite skins of GFRC combined with other materials such as ceramic tile, brick, terra cotta and conventional exposed aggregate concrete have developed cracks early in their life when utilized on metal stud frames. Extensive strain-relief tests and other jobsite and laboratory testing have determined that material incompatibility of these two-material skins has caused out-of-plane bowing potential and very large stresses as a result of differential shrinkage and other differential volume changes. Physical evidence and finite element analyses indicate that these stresses are far in excess of allowable factored tensile stresses allowed by the 1987 PCI Recommended Practice for Glass Fiber Reinforced Concrete Panels.
