Fracture Characteristics for Crack Tip near the Interface between Steel and Concrete in Composite Structures

Abstract

Steel-concrete composite structures are widely used in high buildings for its excellent seismic behaviors, whereas faults or cracks, which have great influence on interfacial mechanical behaviors of structural members, inevitably form near the interface between steel and concrete during the process of molding. Therefore, it is necessary to study the mechanical characteristics of the crack tip near the interface. In this paper, the application scope of the path-independence of J-integral in steel-concrete composite structure with a crack is discussed. According to the conservation law of J-integral for the steel-concrete composite structure with a crack parallel to the interface, a hypothesis that the value of strain energy release rate (SERR) of the mode-I fracture is independent of the crack location when the crack is parallel and close to the interface is put forwarded. And this hypothesis is verified through finite element method (FEM). A schematic model for a skew crack near the steel-concrete interface is provided. The variation law of SERR with the Dundur’s parameters and the angle between crack direction and interface are calculated by FEM. At last, calculating method of the stress intensity factor as well as the SERR for a skew crack near the interface is suggested. All these may contribute to further investigation on interfacial mechanical behaviors for steel-concrete composite structure.