LAUSR

Abstract Thermal bowing, often referred to as bulging or out-of-plane wall deflection, is a common issue in sandwich panel walls caused by a temperature differential between a building's interior temperature and the outside environment. This paper aims to better understand the thermal load response of concrete sandwich wall panels. Fundamental mechanics related to thermal bowing are developed and presented when using standard flexible shear connectors. A relatively simple set of equations are then presented for use in design and verified using full-scale models. Finite element analyses are also performed and compared to the developed sandwich beam theory. This study concludes that current design practices used for solid panels provide an inaccurate prediction of the bowing value because of the nature of force and deformation variations on panels subjected to thermal gradients. The concrete stresses, shear connector forces, and panel deformations result in a non-linear relationship with geometric properties and a linear one with properties of concrete and thermal force.