Behavior of curved steel-concrete composite beams under monotonic load

Abstract

The paper develops a numerical investigation on the behavior of steel-concrete composite beam curved in plan to examine the effect of the various parameters. Three-dimensional finite element analysis (FEA) is employed using a commercial software, ABAQUS. The geometric and material nonlinearities are utilized to simulate the composite beam under a monotonic load. The FEA efficiency has been proved by comparing the numerical results with experimental tests obtained from previous literature, including load-deflection curves, ultimate load, ultimate and failure deflection, and cracks propagation. The validated models are used to assess some of the key parameters such the beam span/radius ratio, web stiffeners, partial interaction, concrete compressive strength, and steel beam yield stress. From the obtained results, it is noticed that the span/radius of curvature ratio influences the loading capacity, the beam yielding (i.e. the beam yield at an early stage) when the span/radius ratio increases and inelastic behavior developed early of the beam due to the torsional effect. The presence of web stiffeners with different locations in the curve composite beam affected the shear strength. The web twisting and vertical separation at the beam mid-span are observed to decrease as the number of the stiffeners increase due to the decrease in the beam torsion incorporating with transferring the failure to the concrete slab. Furthermore, the partial interaction and steel beam yield stress developed in this study appear to have a remarkable effect on beam capacity.