Investigation on mechanical performance of flat steel plate-lightweight aggregate concrete hollow composite slab

Abstract

An innovated type of the flat steel plate-lightweight aggregate concrete hollow composite slab was presented in this paper. This kind of the slab is composed of flat steel plate and the lightweight aggregate concrete slab, which were interfaced with a set of perfobond shear connectors (PBL shear connectors) with circular hollow structural sections (CHSS) and the shear stud connectors. Five specimens were tested under static monotonic loading. In the test, the influence of shear span/height ratios and arrangements of CHSS on bending capacity and flexural rigidity of the composite slabs were investigated. Based on the test results, the crack patterns, failure modes, the bending moment-curvature curves as well as the strains of the flat steel plate and the concrete were focused and analyzed. The test results showed that the flat steel plate was fully connected to the lightweight aggregate concrete slab and no obvious slippage was observed between the steel plate and the concrete, and the composite slabs performed well in terms of bending capacity, flexural rigidity and ductility. It was further shown that all of the specimens failed in bending failure mode regardless of the shear span/height ratios and the arrangement of CHSS. Moreover, the plane-section assumption was proved to be valid, and the calculated formulas for predicting the bending capacity and the flexural rigidity of the composite slabs were proposed on the basis of the experimental results.