Experimental and finite element analysis of steel-concrete composite beams

Abstract EN

A new type of perfobond shear connector is suggested, and tested through design and construction of six steel-concrete composite beams separated on three groups formed from standard steel section (W4X13), with total length of 1300mm.

The concrete slab connected to steel section by using three types of mechanical shear connectors namely ; stud connector and regular circular hole perfobond connectors in addition to newly suggested type of triangular hole perfobond connector.

The beams are experimentally tested using two point load beam test to inspect the effects of connector’s type on beam behaviour at yielding and ultimate stages in terms of deflection at mid-span and slip at ends of tested beams.

A three dimensional nonlinear finite element model is developed using ANSYS software to simulate beam test up to failure.

The results show that, composite beams constructed with newly suggested triangular perfobond connectors developed a strength percentage higher than those with stud connectors, and regular circular perfobond connector.

The finite element model validated by comparing with experiments, predicting differences in ultimate resistances of (0.9 % to 5.7 %) for perfobond connectors and (11.9 % to 19.2 %) for stud connector.