Seminar - Safat Al-Deen - Long-term behaviour of composite steel-concrete floor beams

Wednesday 13 August 2008, 1.10 - 1.55 pm
Civil Engineering Lecture Theatre 3

Abstract:

The use of steel–concrete composite beams has gained popularity in the last century thanks to its ability to well combine the advantages of both steel and concrete. Composite beams are usually made of a steel girder which is linked to a concrete slab, with or without decking, by means of shear connectors. Composite members exhibit enhanced strength and stiffness when compared to the contribution of their components acting separately, and represent a competitive structural solution in many civil engineering applications, such bridges and buildings. The present Australian limit state standard requires the structure to satisfy both ultimate and serviceability limit states. Serviceability is often the governing criteria for the design of typical composite steel-concrete flooring systems in building applications, which is affected by the time dependent behaviour of the concrete. In this context, this study aims to investigate, both experimentally and numerically, the long-term behaviour of composite steel-concrete members. At present only very limited experimental data is available in the literature and the proposed long-term tests will produce useful benchmark results for the calibration and validation of numerical analysis methods.