Elastic stiffness of stud connection in composite structures

Xi Qin,Guotao Yang 국제구조공학회 2021 Steel and Composite Structures, An International J Vol.39 No.4

In composite structures, shear connectors are crucial components to resist the relative slip between the steel and concrete, and thereby to achieve the composite actions. In the service stage, composite structures are usually in elastic state, so the elastic stiffness of the shear connection is a quite important parameter in the structural analysis of composite structures. Nevertheless, the existing studies mainly focus on the load-slip relationship rather than the tangent stiffness at the initial elastic stage. Furthermore, when composite beams subjected to torque or local load, shear connections are affected by both tensile force and shear force. However, the stiffness of shear connections under combined effects appears not to have been discussed hitherto. This paper investigates the initial elastic stiffness of stud connections under combined effects of biaxial forces. The initial expression and the relevant parameters are obtained by establishing a simplified analytical model of the stud connection. Afterwards, parametric finite element analysis is performed to investigate the effects of the relevant factors, including the stud length, stud diameter, elastic modulus of concrete, elastic modulus of steel and volume ratio of reinforcement. The feasibility of the proposed modelling has been proved by comparing with sufficient experimental tests. Based on the analytical analysis and the extensive numerical simulations, design equations for predicting the initial elastic stiffness of stud connections are proposed. The comparison between the equations and the data of finite element models demonstrates that the equations are accurate enough to serve for engineering communities.

Load-slip curves of shear connection in composite structures: prediction based on ANNs

Kai Guo,Guotao Yang 국제구조공학회 2020 Steel and Composite Structures, An International J Vol.36 No.5

The load-slip relationship of the shear connection is an important parameter in design and analysis of composite structures. In this paper, a load-slip curve prediction method of the shear connection based on the artificial neural networks (ANNs) is proposed. The factors which are significantly related to the structural and deformation performance of the connection are selected, and the shear stiffness of shear connections and the transverse coordinate slip value of the load-slip curve are taken as the input parameters of the network. Load values corresponding to the slip values are used as the output parameter. A two-layer hidden layer network with 15 nodes and 10 nodes is designed. The test data of two different forms of shear connections, the stud shear connection and the perforated shear connection with flange heads, are collected from the previous literatures, and the data of six specimens are selected as the two prediction data sets, while the data of other specimens are used to train the neural networks. Two trained networks are used to predict the load-slip curves of their corresponding prediction data sets, and the ratio method is used to study the proximity between the prediction loads and the test loads. Results show that the load-slip curves predicted by the networks agree well with the test curves.

Elastic stiffness of perfobond connections in composite structures

Xi Qin,Guotao Yang 국제구조공학회 2022 Steel and Composite Structures, An International J Vol.42 No.2

Perfobond rib connectors are widely used in composite structures to achieve the composite action between the steel and the concrete, and empirical expressions for their strength and secant stiffness have been obtained by numerical simulations or push-out tests. Since perfobond connections are generally in an elastic state in the service process and the structural analysis are always based on the elastic properties of the members, the secant stiffness is not applicable for the normal structural analysis. However, the tangent stiffness of perfobond connections has not been introduced in previous studies. Moreover, the perfobond connections are bearing tension and shear force simultaneously when the composite beams subjected to torque or local loads, but the current studies fail to arrive at the elastic stiffness considering the combined effects. To resolve these discrepancies, this paper investigates the initial elastic stiffness of perfobond connections under combined forces. The calculation method for the elastic stiffness of perfobond connections is analyzed, and the contributions of the perfobond rib, the perforating rebar and the concrete dowel are investigated. A finite element method was verified with a high value of correlation for the test results. Afterwards, parametric studies are carried out using the reliable finite element analysis to explore the trends of several factors. Empirical equations for predicting the initial elastic stiffness of perfobond connections are proposed by the numerical regression of the data extracted by parametric studies. The equations agree well with finite element analysis and test results, which indicates that the proposed empirical equations reflect a high accuracy for predicting the initial elastic stiffness of perfobond connections.

Static behaviour of multi-row stud shear connectors in high- strength concrete

Qing-Tian Su,Guotao Yang,Mark A. Bradford 국제구조공학회 2014 Steel and Composite Structures, An International J Vol.17 No.6

In regions of high shear forces in composite bridges, headed stud shear connectors need to be arranged with a small spacing in order to satisfy the design requirement of resisting the high interface shear force present at this location. Despite this, studies related to groups of headed studs are somewhat rare. This paper presents an investigation of the static behaviour of grouped stud shear connectors in high-strength concrete. Descriptions are given of five push-out test specimens with different arrangements of the studs that were fabricated and tested, and the failure modes, load-slip response, ultimate load capacities and related slip values that were obtained are reported. It is found that the load-slip equation given by some researchers based on a single stud shear connector in normal strength concrete do not apply to grouped stud shear connectors in high-strength concrete, and an algebraic load-slip expression is proposed based on the test results. Comparisons between the test results and the formulae provided by some national codes show that the equations for the ultimate capacity provided in these codes are conservative when used for connectors in high-strength concrete. A reduction coefficient is proposed to take into account the effect of the studs being in a group.

Axially-loaded multiplanar tubular KTX-joints: numerical analysis

Chenhui Zhang,Bo Zou,Guotao Yang 국제구조공학회 2022 Steel and Composite Structures, An International J Vol.42 No.2

With the development of spatial structures, the joints are becoming more and more complex to connect tubular members of spatial structures. In this study, an approach is proposed to establish high-efficiency finite element model of multiplanar KTX-joint with the weld geometries accurately simulated. Ultimate bearing capacity the KTX-joint is determined by the criterion of deformation limit and failure mechanism of chord wall buckling is studied. Size effect of fillet weld on the joint ultimate bearing capacity is preliminarily investigated. Based on the validated finite element model, a parametric study is performed to investigate the effects of geometric and loading parameters of KT-plane brace members on ultimate bearing capacity of the KTX-joint. The effect mechanism is revealed and several design suggestions are proposed. Several simple reinforcement methods are adopted to constrain the chord wall buckling. It is concluded that the finite element model established by proposed approach is capable of simulating static behaviors of multiplanar KTX-joint; chord wall buckling with large indentation is the typical failure mode of multiplanar KTX-joint, which also increases chord wall displacements in the axis directions of brace members in orthogonal plane; ultimate bearing capacity of the KTX-joint increases approximately linearly with the increase of fillet weld size within the allowed range; the effect mechanism of geometric and loading parameters are revealed by the assumption of restraint region and interaction between adjacent KT-plane brace members; relatively large diameter ratio, small overlapping ratio and small included angle are suggested for the KTX-joint to achieve larger ultimate bearing capacity; the adopted simple reinforcement methods can effectively constrain the chord wall buckling with the design of KTX-joint converted into design of uniplanar KT-joint.

Numerical analysis of the thermal behaviors of cellular concrete

Wei She,Guotang Zha,Guotao Yang,Jinyang Jiang,Xiaoyu Cao,Yi Du 사단법인 한국계산역학회 2016 Computers and Concrete, An International Journal Vol.18 No.3

In this study, both two- and three-dimensional (2D and 3D) finite-volume-based models were developed to analyze the heat transfer mechanisms through the porous structures of cellular concretes under steady-state heat transfer conditions and to investigate the differences between the 2D and 3D modeling results. The 2D and 3D reconstructed pore networks were generated from the microstructural information measured by 3D images captured by X-ray computerized tomography (X-CT). The computed effective thermal conductivities based on the 2D and 3D calculations performed on the reconstructed porous structures were found to be nearly identical to those evaluated from the 2D cross-sectional images and the 3D X-CT images, respectively. In addition, the 3D computed effective thermal conductivity was found to agree better with the measured values, in comparison with the 2D reconstruction and real cross-sectional images. Finally, the thermal conductivities computed for different reconstructed porous 3D structures of cellular concretes were compared with those obtained from 2D computations performed on 2D reconstructed structures. This comparison revealed the differences between 2D and 3D image-based modeling. A correlation was thus derived between the results of the 3D and 2D models.

Strain rate effect of steel-concrete composite panel indented by a hemispherical rigid body

Weiyi Zhao,Lin Wang,Guotao Yang,Ziguo Wang,Zepeng Gao,Quanquan Guo 국제구조공학회 2020 Steel and Composite Structures, An International J Vol.36 No.6

This paper presents numerical and theoretical investigations on the strain rate in steel-concrete composite (SC) panels under low-velocity impact of a hemispherical rigid body. Finite element analyses were performed on five specimens with different loading rates. The impact energy was kept constant to eliminate its influence by simultaneously altering the velocity and mass of the projectile. Results show that the strain rate in most parts of the specimens was low and its influence on bearing capacity and energy dissipation was limited in an average sense of space and time. Therefore, the strain rate effect can be ignored for the analyses of global deformation. However, the strain rate effect should be considered in local contact problems. Equations of the local strain and strain rate were theoretically derived.