Polypropylene Fibre Reinforced Concrete-Stainles Steel Composite Columns: Design and Behaviour: Fid-Bau Portal

Polypropylene Fibre Reinforced Concrete-Stainles Steel Composite Columns: Design and Behaviour

Ellobody, Ehab / Ghazy, Mariam F.

This paper investigates the design and behaviour of polypropylene fibre reinforced (FR) concrete-stainless steel pin-ended composite columns through experimental investigation. The stainless steel tubes used in the composite column tests had an external diameter-to-plate thickness (D/t) ratio of 50. The composite columns had different lengths varied from 3D to 12D and nondimensional slenderness varied from 0.13 to 0.52, respectively. Overall, the investigation aimed to explore the structural benefits of using a composite material such as polypropylene fibre reinforced concrete in filling stainless steel circular tubes for the use in composite construction sector. The study has shown that FR concrete-filled stainless steel tubular columns offer a considerable increase in column ductility compared with plain concrete-filled tubular columns. The test ultimate loads were compared with the design ultimate loads calculated using the Eurocode 4 for composite columns. Generally, it has been shown that the EC4 accurately predicted the ultimate loads of axially loaded concrete-filled stainless steel circular tubular columns, but were quite conservative for predicting the ultimate loads of the eccentrically loaded columns. It has also been shown that the conservatism of the EC4 predictions is increased as the eccentricity is increased. Based on the test results a modification was proposed to improve the EC4 design guides.