Behavior of steel-reinforced composite concrete columns under combined axial and lateral cyclic loading

Abstract

This study presents the experimental and numerical investigations on structural steel-reinforced concrete (SRC) columns under combined axial and lateral cyclic loadings. The main parameters evaluated are the peak lateral strength, mode of failure, hysteretic response, stiffness degradation, and energy dissipation potential of SRC columns. A parametric study has been conducted using a finite element software ABAQUS to predict the flexural capacity of the SRC columns under varying axial load levels and to evaluate the reliability of the design guidelines of Eurocode 4 (2004) and AISC 360-16 (2016) in predicting the axial load (P) - bending moment (M) interaction behavior of SRC columns. In the tension damage regions, the experimental and numerical data points mostly lie within or on the unfactored P-M envelopes of both these standards. However, the data points are found to fall outside the P-M envelopes in the compression damage region. For the SRC columns designed to fail in the compression damage, the Eurocode 4 (2004) provisions showed a more reliable prediction of the failure loads under the uniaxial bending condition.