• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.507-519
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• 2020

Double skin composite walls are increasingly popular and have been applied to many safety-related facilities. They come from the concept of composite slabs. Conventional connectors such as shear studs and binding bars were used in previous studies to act as the internal mechanical connectors to lock the external steel faceplates to the concrete core. However, the restraint effects of these connectors were sometimes not strong enough. In this research, a recently proposed unique type of steel truss was employed along the wall height to enhance the composite action between the two materials. Concrete-filled tube columns were used as the boundary elements. Due to the existence of boundary columns, the restraints of steel faceplates to the concrete differ significantly for the walls with different widths. Therefore, there is a need to explore the effect of height-to-width ratio on the structural behavior of the wall. In the test program, three specimens were designed with the height of 3000 mm, the thickness of 150 mm, and different widths, to simulate the real walls in practice. Axial compression was applied by two actuators on the tested walls. The axial behavior of the walls was evaluated based on the analysis of test results. The influences of height-to-width ratio on structural performance were evaluated. Finally, discussion was made on code-based design.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.1-12
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• 2019

Steel-concrete composite walls have been proposed and developed for applications in various types of structures. The double-skin profiled composite walls, as a natural development of composite flooring, provide structural and architectural merits. However, adequate intermediate fasteners between profiled steel plates and concrete core are required to fully mobilize the composite action and to improve the structural behavior of the wall. In this research, two new types of fasteners (i.e., threaded rods and vertical plates) were proposed and three specimens with different fastener types or fastener arrangements were tested under axial compression. The experimental results were evaluated in terms of failure modes, axial load versus axial displacement response, strength index, ductility index, and load-strain relationship. It was found that specimen with symmetrically arranged thread rods sustained more stable axial strain than that with staggered arranged threaded rods. Meanwhile, vertical plates are more suitable for practical use since they provide stronger confinement to profiled steel plate and effectively prevent the steel plate from early local buckling, which eventually enhance the composite action and increase the axial compressive capacity of the wall. The calculation methods were then proposed and good agreement was observed between the test results and the predicted results.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.51 no.1
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• pp.53-61
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• 2024

Aluminum foams sandwich panel (AFSP) has been used in engineering field, where cyclic loading is used in most of the applications. In this paper, the fatigue life of AFSP prepared by the bonding method was investigated through a three-point bending test. The mathematical statistics method was used to analyze the influence of different plate thicknesses and core densities on the bending fatigue life. The macroscopic fatigue failure modes and damage mechanisms were observed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The results indicate that panel thickness and core layer density have a significant influence on the bending fatigue life of AFSP and their dispersion. The damage mechanism of fatigue failure to cells in aluminum foam is that the initial fatigue crack begins the cell wall, the thinnest position of the cell wall or the intersection of the cell wall and the cell ridge, where stress concentrations are more likely to occur. The fatigue failure of aluminum foam core usually starts from the semi-closed unit of the lower layer, and the fatigue crack propagates layer by layer along the direction of the maximum shear stress. The results can provide a reference for the practical engineering design and application of AFSP.

• Advances in aircraft and spacecraft science
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.169-187
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• 2019

This work presents a practical detailed finite element (FE) approach for the three-dimensional (3D) free-vibration analysis of actual aircraft and spacecraft-type lightweight and thin honeycomb sandwich panels. It consists of calling successively in $MATLAB^{(R)}$, via a developed user-friendly GUI, a detailed 3D meshing tool, a macrocommands language translator and a commercial FE solver($ABAQUS^{(R)}$ or $ANSYS^{(R)}$). In contrary to the common practice of meshing finely the faces and core cells, the proposed meshing tool represents each wall of the actual hexagonal core cells as a single two-dimensional (2D) 4 nodes quadrangularshell element or two 3 nodes triangular ones, while the faces meshes are obtained simply using the nodes at the core-faces interfaces. Moreover, as the same 2D FE interpolation type is used for meshing the core and faces, this leads to an automatic handling of their required FE compatibility relations. This proposed approach is applied to a sample made of very thin glass fiber reinforced polymer woven composite faces and a thin aluminum alloy hexagonal honeycomb core. The unknown or incomplete geometric and materials properties are first collected through direct measurements, reverse engineering techniques and experimental-FE modal analysis-based inverse identification. Then, the free-vibrations of the actual honeycomb sandwich panel are analyzed experimentally under different boundary conditions and numerically using different mesh basic cell shapes. It is found that this approach is accurate for the first few modes used for pre-design purpose.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.47-64
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• 2003

In a nonlinear finite element study on the mechanical behavior of simple beam connections to continuous concrete-filled steel tube columns, two principally different connection types were analyzed: one with plates attached to the outside of the tube wall, relying on shear transfer, and one with an extended plate inserted through the steel section to ensure bearing on the concrete core. The load was applied partly at the connection within the column length and partly at the top, representing the load from upper stories of a multistory building. The primary focus was on the increased demand for load transfer to ensure composite action when concrete with higher compressive strength is used. The results obtained from the analyses showed that the design bond strength derived from push tests is very conservative, mainly due to the high frictional shear resistance offered by pinching and contraction effects caused by connection rotation. However, with higher concrete strength the demand for load transfer increases, and is hard to fulfill for higher loads when connections are attached only to the steel section. Instead, the connection should penetrate into the concrete core to distribute load to the concrete by direct bearing.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.329-340
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• 2001

Cyclic response of "shear" connections between steel outrigger beams and reinforced concrete core walls is presented in this paper. The connections investigated in this paper consisted of a shear tab welded onto a plate that was connected to the core walls through multiple headed studs. The experimental data from six specimens point to a capacity larger than the design value. However, the mode of failure was through pullout of the embedded plate, or fracture of the weld between the studs and plate. Such brittle modes of failure need to be avoided through proper design. A capacity design method based on dissipating the input energy through yielding and fracture of the shear tab was developed. This approach requires a good understanding of the expected capacity of headed studs under combined gravity shear and cyclic axial load (tension and compression). A model was developed and verified against test results from six specimens. A specimen designed based on the proposed design methodology performed very well, and the connection did not fail until shear tab fractured after extensive yielding. The proposed design method is recommended for design of outrigger beam-wall connections.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.1073-1084
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• 2016

Rectangular concrete-filled steel tubular columns with unequal wall thickness were investigated in the paper. The physical centroid, the centroidal principal axes of inertia, and the section core were given. The generalized bending formula and the generalized eccentric compression formula were deduced, and the equation of the neutral axis was also provided. The two rectangular concrete-filled steel tubular stub specimens subjected to the compression load on the physical centroid and the geometric centroid respectively were tested to verify the theoretical formulas.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.1 no.4
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• pp.271-281
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• 2012

Tianjin Goldin Finance 117 tower has an architectural height of 597 m, total of 117 stories, and the coronation of having the highest structural roof of all the buildings under construction in China. Structural height-width ratio is approximately 9.5, exceeding the existing regulation code significantly. In order to satisfy earthquake and wind-resisting requirements, a structure consisting of a perimeter frame composed of mega composite columns, mega braces and transfer trusses and reinforced concrete core containing composite steel plate wall is adopted. Complemented by some of the new requirements from the latest Chinese building seismic design codes, design of the super high-rise building in high-intensity seismic area exhibits a number of new features and solutions to professional requirements in response spectrum selection, overall stiffness control, material and component type selection, seismic performance based design, mega-column design, anti-collapse and stability analysis as well as elastic-plastic time-history analysis. Furthermore, under the prerequisite of economic viability and a series of technical requirements prescribed by the expert review panel for high-rise buildings exceeding code limits, the design manages to overcome various structural challenges and realizes the intentions of the architect and the client.

• Composites Research
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.23-31
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• 2009

This paper investigated acoustic emission (AE) characteristics in association with various fracture processes of glass fiber reinforced plastic skin/ aluminum honeycomb core (GF-AH) hybrid composites under compressive and bending loads. Various failure modes such as skin layer fracture, skin/core interfacial fracture, and local plastic yield buckling and cell wall adhesive fracture occurring in the honeycomb cell wall were classified through the fracture identification in association with the AE frequency and amplitude analysis. The distribution of the event-rate in which it has a high amplitude showed a procedure of cell wall adhesive fracture, skin/core interfacial debonding and fiber breakage, whereas distribution of different peak frequencies indicated the plastic deformation of aluminum cell wall and the friction between honeycomb walls. Consequently, the fracture behaviors of GF-AH hybrid composites could be characterized through a nondestructive evaluation employing the AE technique.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.95-109
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• 2020

This paper aims to analytically study the effect of loading conditions and confinement type on the mechanical properties of the concrete-steel composite columns under axial compressive loading. The axial loading is applied to the composite columns in the two ways; only on the concrete core, and on the concrete core and steel tube simultaneously, which are called steel tube-confined concrete (STCC) and concrete-filled steel tube (CFST) columns, respectively. In addition, the confinement is investigated in the three types of passive, short-term active and long-term active confinement. Nonlinear finite element 3D models for analyzing these columns are developed using the ABAQUS program, and then these models are verified with respect to the recent experimental results reported by the authors on the STCC and CFST columns experiencing active and passive confinements. Axial and lateral stress-strain curves as well as the failure mode for qualitative verification, and compressive strength for quantitative verification are considered. It is found that there is a good consistency between the finite element analysis results and the experimental ones. In addition, a parametric study is performed to evaluate the effect of axial loading type, prestressing ratio, concrete compressive strength and steel tube diameter-to-wall thickness ratio on the compressive behavior of the composite columns. Finally, the compressive strength results of CFST specimens obtained via the finite element analysis are compared with the values specified by the international codes and standards including EC4, CSA, ACI-318, and AISC, with the results showing that ACI-318 and AISC underestimate the compressive strength of the composite columns, while EC4 and CSA codes present overestimated values.