Fibre-reinforced polymer (FRP) rebars are being increasingly used to reinforce concrete structures that require long-term resistance to a corrosive environment. This study presents structural performance of large scale two-way concrete slabs reinforced with FRP rebars, and their performances were compared against conventional steel reinforced concrete. Both carbon FRP (CFRP) and basalt FRP (BFRP) were considered as steel replacement. Experimental results showed that the CFRP- and BFRP-RC slabs had approximately 7% and 4% higher cracking moment capacities than the steel-RC slab, respectively. The BFRP-RC slabs experienced a gradual decrease in the load capacity beyond the peak load, whereas the CFRP-RC slabs underwent a sharp decrease in load capacity, similar to the steel-RC slab. The BFRP-RC slabs demonstrated 1.72 times higher ductility than CFRP-RC slabs. The steel-RC slab was found to be safe against punching shear but failed due to flexural bending moment. The FRP-RC slabs were adequately safe against bending moment but failed due to punching shear. At failure load, the steel rebars were found to be yielded; however, the FRP rebars were not ruptured. FRP-RC slabs experienced a higher number of cracks and higher deflection compared to the steel-RC slab. However, FRP-RC slabs exhibited elastic recovery while unloading. Elastic recovery was not observed in the steel-RC slab. Additionally, the analytical load carrying capacity was validated against experimental values to investigate the efficacy of the current available standards (ACI 318-14 and ACI 440.1R-15) to predict the capacity of a two-way slab reinforced with CFRP or BFRP. The experimental load capacity of the CFRP-RC slabs was found to be approximately 1.20 times higher than the theoretical ultimate load capacity. However, the experimental load capacity of the BFRP-RC slabs was 6% lower than their theoretical ultimate load capacity.

Cross-laminated timber (CLT) is an engineered wood product made up of layers of structurally graded timber, where subsequent layers are oriented orthogonally to each other. In CLT, the layers oriented in transverse direction, generally termed as cross-layer, are subjected to shear in radial–tangential plane, which is commonly known as rolling shear. As the shear modulus of cross-layers is significantly lower than that in other planes, CLT exhibits higher shear deformation under out-of-plane loading in contrast to other engineered wood products such as laminated veneer lumber (LVL) and glue laminated timber (GLT). Several analytical methods such as Timoshenko, modified gamma and shear analogy methods were proposed to account for this excessive shear deformation in CLT. This paper focuses on the effectiveness of Timoshenko method in hybrid CLT, in which hardwood cross-layers are used due to their higher rolling shear modulus. A comprehensive numerical study was conducted and obtained results were carefully analyzed for a range of hybrid combinations. It was observed that Timoshenko method could not accurately predict the shear response of CLTs with hardwood cross layers. Comprehensive parametric analysis was conducted to generate reliable numerical results, which were subsequently used to propose modified design equations for hybrid CLTs.