Steel Stiffeners for Enhancement of Slab-Column Connections

Abstract

This paper introduced a strengthening technique for flat plates using steel stiffeners. In this paper, the effectiveness of steel stiffeners with different arrangements and numbers on the punching shear strength. The strengthening steel stiffeners were installed around the column and extended to the slab and acted as a column capital and designed with the equivalent of a concrete column capital. The study was divided into two lines, the first line was the experimental study involves the molding three reinforced concrete flat slab models strengthening with different dimensions and the molding three reinforced concrete flat slab models strengthening with different dimensions and numbers of steel stiffeners, where the dimensions of steel plates changed as shown for specimen SS1 (100×100mm), SS2 (200×200mm), and SS3 (300×300mm) in addition to reference model without strengthening. The second line that numerical modeling through the ABAQUS finite element program was introduced. Effect of the steel stiffeners' size and the effect of the column's shape (rectangular and circular) that's deal with steel stiffeners were studied experimentally and numerically. A good agreement was obtained between the experimental and theoretical results.