Hysteretic performance of circular high-strength concrete-filled double skin steel tubular columns: Experiment

Abstract

In marine structures, utilizing high-strength materials in concrete-filled double skin steel tubular (CFDST) members can provide an optimized solution upon the tendency of light self-weight and high performance. The cyclic load in the marine environment usually determines the safety margin for whole offshore structures. Therefore, this paper experimentally investigated the hysteretic performance of circular high-strength concrete-filled double skin steel tubular (HCFDST) columns with out-of-code diameter-to-thickness ratios. The typical failure mode appeared with the infill material crushing, steel fracture and local buckling of outer tubes. Subsequently, the detailed analysis of hysteretic curves, skeleton curves and ductility, energy dissipation, stiffness degradation, and lateral force reduction was conducted to reflect the influences of hollow ratios, axial compression ratios, and infill types, e.g., increasing the hollow ratio from 0.54 to 0.68 and 0.82, respectively reduced the bearing capacity by 6.25% and 11.20%, and the ductility coefficient had an apparent decrease of 19.27% and 26.61%. The out-of-code HCFDST columns with reasonable design could behave with favorable hysteretic performance. A theoretical model considering the tensile strength effect of engineered cementitious composite (ECC) was finally established and verified to predict the moment-resisting capacity of HCFDST columns using ECC. The reported research on HCFDST columns can provide significant references to marine structure applications.