Nonlinear finite element analysis of mechanical connections splicing precast columns with stiffened laminated metal plates

Abstract

The authors suggested mechanical connections for splicing two precast columns in their previous study. The present study proposes an efficient method of improving the performance of these connections consisting of laminated plates with additional interior stiffeners (interior bolts and rib stiffeners) to improve the efficiency of the design. The aim of this study was to develop a method for splicing two precast components using a pair of stiffened column plates with high-strength bolts, interior bolts and rib stiffeners, exploring the influence of the stiffened plates on the flexural capacity and the structural behavior of the mechanical connections. A non-linear finite element model was proposed considering damaged concrete plasticity, dilatancy accounting for the inelastic strains of the concrete materials, damage variables and plasticity and the concrete constitutive relationships, providing an efficient and dependable alternative to full-scale experimental investigations. This numerical investigation verified that the interior bolts and rib stiffeners contributed to developing optimized connections, enhancing the flexural resisting capacity of the spliced columns to almost the level of conventional monolithic cast-in-place columns. The abstract images illustrate the reduced deformation of the stiffened mechanical plates with the interior bolts obtained by the nonlinear finite element analysis.

Keywords

• steel-concrete composite precast frames
• interior bolts
• interior rib stiffeners
• nonlinear inelastic analysis
• mechanical column-column steel plate joint