GBT Analysis of Steel-Concrete Composite Beams: Recent Developments

Abstract

This paper reports the most recent developments concerning Generalized Beam Theory (GBT) formulations, and corresponding finite element implementations, for steel-concrete composite beams. These formulations are able to perform the following types of analysis: (i) materially nonlinear analysis, to calculate the beam load-displacement response, up to collapse, including steel plasticity, concrete cracking/crushing and shear lag effects, (ii) bifurcation (linear stability) analysis, to obtain local/distortional bifurcation loads and buckling mode shapes of beams subjected to negative (hogging) bending, accounting for shear lag and concrete cracking effects and (iii) long-term service analysis including creep, cracking and arbitrary cross-section deformation (which includes shear lag) effects. The potential (computational efficiency and accuracy) of the proposed GBT-based finite elements is illustrated through several numerical examples. For comparison purposes, results obtained with standard finite strip and shell/brick finite element models are provided.