Ultimate load capacity of high-performance fibre-concrete hollow square columns

Abstract

High-performance fibre-reinforced concrete is gaining popularity due to fibres ability to improve the poor properties of high-performance concrete. High-performance materials make using of thin-wall structures possible. Square section with square hollow provides decreasing of non-renewable material consumption, column’s high stiffness in the both planes and possibility to integrate the engineering communication inside of columns. The current study focuses on the development of analytical simplified calculation method that approximate output results of finite elements calculations for columns under eccentric loading with complicate hollow square-section. Analytical simplified calculation method to determine column’s load-carrying capacity is developed as the second-degree polynomial equation which is based on response surface method. The variables of equation are column height and material consumptions of the high-performance fibre reinforced concrete and steel of the additional longitudinal reinforcement. Data set of 27 experiments calculations was used to get the coefficients of adequate equation. Based on the results, the obtained equation makes it possible to predict the load-carrying capacity of the column in selected the factors interval on which a function was defined with sufficient precision. The difference between load-carrying capacities determine by numerical model based on the finite element method and by obtained second-degree equation does not exceeds 3.3%.

Keywords

• high-performance fibre-reinforced concrete
• hollow square section
• hollow concrete column
• finite element method
• response surface method
• eccentric loading
• computational time reduction
• simplified analytical calculation