Abstract
In a steel-concrete composite beam (hereafter referred to as a composite beam), partial interaction between the concrete slab and the steel beam results in an appreciable increase in the beam deflections relative to full interaction behavior. Moreover, the distribution type of the shear connectors has a great impact on the degree of the composite action between the two components of the beam. To reveal the effect of shear connector layout in the performance of composite beams, on the basis of a developed one-dimensional composite beam element validated by the closed-form precision solutions and experimental results, this paper optimizes the layout of shear connectors in composite beams with partial interaction by adopting a stepwise uniform distribution of shear connectors to approximate the triangular distribution of the shear connector density without increasing the total number of shear connectors. Based on a comparison of all the different types of stepped rectangles distribution, this paper finally suggests the 3-stepped rectangles distribution of shear connectors as a reasonable and applicable optimal method.
Highlights
The most common composite constructions in buildings, bridges and other large span structures are steel-concrete composite beams due to their virtues, such as high strength, high stiffness and good ductility
This paper proposes an optimal layout method of shear connectors for a steel-concrete composite beam with interface slip that is based on a one-dimensional composite beam element model
The proposed composite beam element model consists of two beam components, which are considered to be a Euler-Bernoulli beam, and the corresponding element stiffness matrix is derived by adopting the total potential energy method
Summary
The most common composite constructions in buildings, bridges and other large span structures are steel-concrete composite beams due to their virtues, such as high strength, high stiffness and good ductility. Despite the fact that the triangular distribution and stepwise distribution of shear connectors can reduce interface slips, it may be inconvenient to apply them in practice, as mentioned above Their application was restricted to simple load cases only (i.e., uniformly distributed load or point load at mid-span), because no analytical solutions were provided for composite beams with more than two distribution types under other complicated load cases. This research has only concentrated upon the description and verification of the corresponding finite element models, but these finite element models have not been utilized to study in detail either the impact of the distribution type of shear connectors on the interface slip, or other aspects of the system behavior These works adopted the continuous bond model for interface connection, but in practical engineering, the two components of composite beams are often connected in a discrete way by means of shear connectors.
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