Concrete fatigue of composite constructions with rib shear connectors: Fid-Bau Portal

Concrete fatigue of composite constructions with rib shear connectors

Christou, Georgios / Hegger, Josef / Classen, Martin

Rib shear connectors are gaining increasingly attention in the field of composite constructions. Especially in bridge constructions, rib shear connectors offer many advantages compared to conventional composite shear connectors such as headed studs. In order to describe the load‐bearing behaviour of rib shear connectors under cyclic loading, the successively increasing slip resulting from the cyclic loading of the shear connectors must be taken into account. The latter leads to the growth of the relative displacements along the composite joint and thus, to the degradation of the previously rigid shear connection. This effect leads to rearrangements of internal forces between the composite partners through which the load bearing behaviour and load bearing capacity of the structure alter. In this article results of experimental investigations on two cyclic single Push‐Out‐Tests (sPOT) and one full‐scale girder test regarding the degradation of the composite interconnection are presented and analysed. The investigated shear connectors in the full‐scale girder test are subjected to a comparable load history to that of the connectors in the sPOT. The results give insight into the effects of the degradation of the shear connection, as previously seen in sPOT, on the overall load bearing behaviour of composite girders.