Strengthening of Composite Steel-Concrete Beams Openings by Adopting Different Reinforcement Methods

This paper presents an experimental and numerical study carried out to investigate the flexural and shear behavior of concrete-steel composite beams with circular web openings strengthened using two different techniques around openings. The experimental program conducted on nine simply supported beams which were constructed with different variables. One steel beam and eight concrete-steel composite beams were experimentally tested. The tested beams are of 1500 mm length and BFI cross section of steel beam but composite beams were BFI steel section connected with concrete slab had 300 mm width and 70 mm depth, while this connection is done by headed stud shear connector. The tested specimens subjected to positive bending were loaded by one or two line load across the width of the concrete slab. The main parameters were the type of beams, web openings effect, location of web openings, strengthening techniques around openings externally CFRP strips and vertical steel links using steel plates placed on the top and bottom surface of beams anchored with fine threads, and number of CFRP strips layers. The effect of these parameters on the failure of modes, ultimate load, first cracking load and deflection were investigated. Moreover, a finite element models were developed by ANSYS (version 14) to simulate all the tested specimens, experimental test results were compared with FE results obtained. The experimental results showed that both strengthening systems applied in this research were remarkably increased the beam strength, and the capacity retrieve of beams without openings. This study approved that steel links technique gave more prominent simplicity of use and low cost. FEM models were in good agreement with the corresponding experimental ones. However, the calculated ultimate loads were slightly higher than the experimental ultimate loads up to 10%.