Creep of concrete-filled steel tube considering creep-recovery of the concrete core

Abstract

Concrete creep results in the strain increment of concrete-filled steel tube. In this article, a new method was established for creep prediction of concrete-filled steel tube considering the creep-recovery effect of the concrete core with creep model and separate creep-recovery model, named two-function method. Five creep models including the recent proposed B4 model and two separate creep-recovery models were used in the method. First, the creep models were compared with 197 test curves of creep of sealed concrete. The results show that the B4 model offers the highest prediction accuracy for load duration time longer than 200 days. Then, the two-function method was used for creep prediction of normal strength concrete-filled steel tube and high-strength concrete-filled steel tube. For comparison, the creep prediction method for concrete-filled steel tube based on the principle of superposition was also adopted. The principle of superposition did not predict the creep of concrete-filled steel tube accurately. The calculation results based on the two-function method are closer to the test data, especially for normal strength concrete-filled steel tube. Finally, the uncertainty of creep in concrete-filled steel tube was analyzed considering the variability of the concrete strength. The results indicate that the variances calculated by the methods with the MC 2010 creep model are smaller than that of the B4 model. The creep strains of concrete-filled steel tube calculated by the two-function method are subject to normal distribution.