• Steel and Composite Structures
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• 제31권6호
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• pp.559-573
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• 2019

Spiral spacing effect on axial compressive behavior of reinforced concrete filled steel tube (RCFST) stub column is experimentally investigated in this paper. A total of twenty specimens including sixteen square RCFST columns and four benchmarked conventional square concrete filled steel tube (CFST) columns are fabricated and tested. Test variables include spiral spacing (spiral ratio) and concrete strength. The failure modes, load versus displacement curves, compressive rigidity, axial compressive strength, and ductility of the specimens are obtained and analyzed. Especially, the effect of spiral spacing on axial compressive strength and ductility is investigated and discussed in detail. Test results show that heavily arranged spirals considerably increase the ultimate compressive strength but lightly arranged spirals have no obvious effect on the ultimate strength. In practical design, the effect of spirals on RCFST column strength should be considered only when spirals are heavily arranged. Spiral spacing has a considerable effect on increasing the post-peak ductility of RCFST columns. Decreasing of the spiral spacing considerably increases the post-peak ductility of the RCFSTs. When the concrete strength increases, ultimate strength increases but the ductility decreases, due to the brittleness of the higher strength concrete. Arranging spirals, even with a rather small amount of spirals, is an economical and easy solution for improving the ductility of RCFST columns with high-strength concrete. Ultimate compressive strengths of the columns are calculated according to the codes EC4 (2004), GB 50936 (2014), AIJ (2008), and ACI 318 (2014). The ultimate strength of RCFST stub columns can be most precisely evaluated using standard GB 50936 (2014) considering the effect of spiral confinement on core concrete.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• 제46권2호
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• pp.153-173
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• 2023

Rectangular concrete-filled steel tubular (RCFST) column, a type of concrete-filled steel tubular (CFST), is widely used in compression members of structures because of its advantages. This paper proposes a robust machine learning-based framework for predicting the ultimate compressive strength of RCFST columns under both concentric and eccentric loading. The gradient boosting neural network (GBNN), an efficient and up-to-date ML algorithm, is utilized for developing a predictive model in the proposed framework. A total of 890 experimental data of RCFST columns, which is categorized into two datasets of concentric and eccentric compression, is carefully collected to serve as training and testing purposes. The accuracy of the proposed model is demonstrated by comparing its performance with seven state-of-the-art machine learning methods including decision tree (DT), random forest (RF), support vector machines (SVM), deep learning (DL), adaptive boosting (AdaBoost), extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), and categorical gradient boosting (CatBoost). Four available design codes, including the European (EC4), American concrete institute (ACI), American institute of steel construction (AISC), and Australian/New Zealand (AS/NZS) are refereed in another comparison. The results demonstrate that the proposed GBNN method is a robust and powerful approach to obtain the ultimate strength of RCFST columns.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• 제45권5호
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• pp.749-766
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• 2022

This paper investigates the seismic performance of exposed RCFST column-base joints, in which the high-strength steel bars (USD 685) are set through the column and reinforced concrete foundation without any base plate and anchor bolts. Three specimens with different axial force ratios (n = 0, 0.25, and 0.5) were tested under cyclic loadings. Finite element analysis (FEA) models were validated in the basic indexes and failure mode. The hysteresis behavior of the exposed RCFST column-base joints was studied by the parametrical analysis including six parameters: width of column (D), width-thickness ratio (D/t), axial force ratio (n), shear-span ratio (L/D), steel tube strength (f_y) and concrete strength (f_c). The bending moment of the exposed RCFST column-base joint increased with D, f_y and f_c. But the D/t and L/D play a little effect on the bending capacity of the new column-base joint. Finally, the calculation formula is proposed to assess the bending moment capacities, and the accuracy and stability of the formula are verified.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• 제44권1호
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• pp.1-15
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• 2022

The weld quality has always been an important factor affecting the development of exposed CFT column-base joint. In this paper, a new type of exposed RCFST column-base joint is proposed, in which the high strength steel bars (USD 685) are set through the column and reinforced concrete foundation without any base plate and anchor bolts. Three specimens, the varying axial force ratio (0, 0.25 and 0.5), were tested under cyclic loadings. In addition, the bending moment capacity, energy dissipation capacity and deformation capacity of column-base joints were clarified. The experimental results indicated that the axial force ratio increases the stiffness and the bending moment and improves the energy dissipation capacity of column-base joints. This is because a large axial force can limit the slip between steel tubular and infilled concrete effectively. The specimens show stable hysteresis behavior.