Inelastic behaviour of hybrid reinforced concrete beam and steel column systems

Behaviour and design of hybrid RC beam-to-steel column connections

“…The numerical validation was carried out for specimens with varying geometry and constitutive parameters for 14 hybrid members, as described above [23,24], 12 reinforced concrete beams from an established test series [25,26], as well as 40 flat slab connections with or without shear-keys [27][28][29][30][31] In all cases, the results were assessed in terms of the stiffness, cracking force, ultimate strength, crack kinematics and overall failure modes. For brevity, only selected validations are presented in this paper, whilst the complete load-deformation curves and full details are described elsewhere [28].…”

“…For all the material and geometrical characteristics examined in the experiments, the embedded shearkey was of sufficient strength, with no local failures in the steel insert taking place at ultimate. To better understand the shear force distribution and reactions at the shear-key, parametric investigations showed that for flexural reinforcement ratios (e.g ρl=0.3%), the shear-key takes a higher amount of force than in the case of relatively high reinforcement ratios (ρl=1.1-1.9%) [26,56]. In the former case, about 80% of the total force is transferred by the shear-key, whilst it varies in the second but can be as low as 40%.…”

“…This paper therefore examines the performance of hybrid connections between steel columns and RC beams by means of shear-keys, through detailed parametric assessments. The numerical procedures are firstly validated against tests on RC beams and flat slabs [25,26] as well as hybrid connections to beams and flat slabs [27,28]. Extensive parametric investigations using over 200 hybrid models are then described, within which the various modes of failure are examined and the influence of the salient material and geometric parameters is quantified.…”