Prefabricated Composite Beams Based on Innovative Shear Connection

Abstract

Composite structures, especially steel-concrete composites have a great potential of use in the building industry. A correct combination of materials and elimination of disadvantages of used material may lead to significant savings in aspects like the amount of material used, and time needed for construction. Also cost reduction while using composite structure instead of the structure fabricated only from one material should be mentioned. The paper focuses on the design of alternative solutions for composite steel-concrete structures with encased steel beams. Simultaneously, a design model was developed using the Abaqus software environment. The exact physical properties of the individual materials were verified by experiment. Tensile strength of steel, compressive strength of concrete, bending strength of concrete in tension, and splitting tensile strength were determined along with the modulus of elasticity of concrete in compression. The correctness of the design model applied by means of the Abaqus program was experimentally verified.

Keywords

• shear connection
• composite structures
• numerical analysis
• modelling concrete