THE SMARTCOCO DESIGN GUIDE FOR HYBRID CONCRETE-STEEL STRUCTURES

Abstract

Standard buildings in steel and in reinforced concrete are constructed by two different industrial sectors with little interaction.  Even steel-concrete composite buildings remain designed as steel structures, with a limited benefit of the presence of concrete slabs.  For some years however, a more integrated design between both materials is used, merely in high rise and heavy loaded structures.  This new trend is not supported by actual standards that give little guidance for the specific arrangements that come from this new practice. The RFCS SMARTCOCO research project is intended to fill these gaps in knowledge and provide design guidance for some composite elements covered neither by Eurocode 2 nor by Eurocode 4 : composite columns or walls reinforced by several fully encased steel sections, reinforced concrete columns reinforced by one steel section over the height of one storey and concrete flat slabs or beams connected to columns or walls by means of steel shear keys. Gaps in knowledge are mostly related to force transmission between concrete and embedded steel profiles. A generic design approach has been developed and then used to design test specimens. The results have been used to calibrate the design proposals. The output is a design guide which complements Eurocode 2 and 4.