Structural performance of novel thin-walled composite cold-formed steel/PE-ECC beams

摘要

A novel form of thin-walled composite beams has been developed by bonding cold-formed steel (CFS) and engineered cementitious composites (ECC). Apart from the superior material strength and ductility of CFS and ECC, the proposed CFS/ECC composite system also benefits from the lightweight concept of thin-walled sections and improved buckling performance due to the ECC restraints on CFS. An experimental study, utilising cold-formed steel sections with a yield strength of 450 MPa and engineered cementitious composites with an ultimate tensile strength of 7 MPa, was conducted to investigate the improvement of the innovated structural system over the traditional CFS structures. Two series of composite CFS/ECC beams, namely, short-and long span Series, were prepared and tested to monitor the shear and flexural behaviours of the novel composite system. Three locations of thin-layered ECC; outside, inside, and in-out of the CFS section were proposed to determine the perfect composite action between ECC and CFS. The load capacity of the composite beams (ECC-in composite beams) increased to eight times those of the bare CFS members in the short-span Series and up to four times in the long-span Series. The failure modes of the novel composite beams were more ductile compared to the bare CFS. Numerical modelling was conducted and validated using the results obtained from the experimental study. This FE model was employed in a small-scale parametric study to investigate the influence of beam spans on the structural behaviour of the composite CFS/ECC beams.