Abstract :
[en] Composite steel-concrete floor solutions have become popular in the design of buildings thanks to the efficient combination of high tensile strength and ductility of steel with reinforced concrete elements in compression. To ensure the longitudinal shear transfer between the downstand steel beam and the concrete slab in composite beams, headed stud shear connections are generally employed with profiled steel sheeting transverse to the supporting beam. However, whilst the steel deck enhances the bending resistance of the slab, the performance of the shear connection decreases. Based on the evaluation of a large database of push-out tests carried out in the last 40 years, several design models have been proposed in the last decades to predict the resistance of studs but none of them provides safe and reliable results. This is related to the fact that the proposed design equations do not always consider appropriately the actual resistance mechanisms activated in the shear connection. Also, as the failure modes are typically observed at high displacements, no information on the resistance components at lower displacements is given. Therefore, a deep investigation on the sequence of the load bearing resistance mechanisms of headed stud shear connections was performed with the support of an experimental campaign of 21 full scale push-out tests and numerical simulations. From the analysis of the experimental results, it was seen that all the samples experienced rib punching at low displacements followed by concrete pull-out failure or stud rupture. The influence of several structural parameters was also assessed by comparing different test series. It was found that 200 mm wide recess and slab depth have a minor impact on the performance of the connection. Instead, the addition of waveform rebars increased the resistance by 26% as well as the slip capacity whereas the different position of the wire mesh did not show an important influence. To investigate specifically the behaviour of the shear connections, the distribution of the compressive stresses in the rib and the plastic hinges developed in the stud connector were evaluated by means of a validated finite element model. From the outcomes of the experimental and numerical study, three main load bearing phases were distinguished. At low displacements (Phase 1), the concrete is not damaged until the typical cone crack initiates at the edge of the rib and the stud deforms in bending. Subsequently (Phase 2), while the cracks propagate, the internal forces in the rib redistribute and the resistance is governed by the bearing stresses of the concrete in front of the connector. At large displacements (Phase 3), the front side of the concrete rib is highly damaged whereas the tension stresses in the stud increases significantly due to pulling forces. For further slips, this can lead to concrete pull-out or stud rupture as confirmed by the experimental studies. These insights were taken as a basis for the development of three respective mechanical models: cantilever model, modified strut and tie model (MSTM), and strut and tie model (STM). Whilst the first considers the system as a cantilever beam, the other two reproduce the concrete as a system of compression struts and the steel sheeting was modelled as tie elements. All the resistance functions were analytically derived in consideration of the experimental and numerical results in order to estimate the capacity of the shear connection at different displacements. As the STM focuses on the behaviour at large deformations, only the first two models were considered to predict the actual capacity of the shear connection. The design resistance of these two proposed models was finally calibrated according to the statistical procedure of EN 1990.
