A Simple Formula for Prediction of Compressive Strength of Square CFT Columns

Abstract

Concrete filled steel tube structures are becoming very popular in the modern civil engineering projects. Studying composite structures is useful, since it is an innovative and contemporary way to build structures. This type of structure has the ability to use respective strength of both steel and concrete due to confinement. Prefabrication of steel tube section is beneficial, and allows rapid installation into main structure. It also reduces the assembly cost and construction time. This paper will present the simple equation to predict the compressive strength of square concrete filled steel tube by using Finite Element Analysis (FEA)based software ABAQUs. In this study, 3D non-linear finite element models of short square composite columns were prepared using ABAQUS. The results were compared with published experimental tests of a concrete filled steel tube short columns. After getting the good agreement with the experimental results, a simple equation for the prediction of compressive strength is presented by considering the width to thickness ratio of steel tube. Results are validated with experimental results. The equation can predict the compressive strength only for the given material strengths and in future, the simple equation can be improved by considering different parameters e.g. material strength, slenderness ratio and end conditions.