Punching behaviors of steel–concrete–steel sandwich panels with interlocked angle connectors: Experimental and analytical studies

Abstract

This paper presents a new steel–concrete–steel sandwich panel with interlocked angle connectors (SCSP-IACs), and its punching performances were experimentally and analytically studied. Nine SCSP-IACs were fabricated and tested under the out-of-plane patch loads. Test results showed that SCSP-IACs exhibited two types of load–deflection (P–δ) responses with the variation of spacing of IACs (S), and increasing S also showed significantly negative influences on their punching behaviors. Two peak resistances were observed from the P–δ curves of all SCSP-IACs, and the first and second peak resistances (Pu1 and Pu2) corresponded to the punching shear failure of the concrete core and top steel faceplate, respectively. The punching shear resistance of SCSP-IACs was found to be evidently improved with the increase of steel faceplate thickness (ts) and concrete core thickness (d), while increasing S led to the decrease of punching shear resistance of SCSP-IACs. Moreover, the interlocking bolt in IACs exhibited little influence on the punching behaviors of SCSP-IACs. Finally, analytical models were proposed for calculating the punching shear resistance of SCSP-IACs, and their accuracies were also verified with test data.