Composite behaviour of headed stud shear connectors with BubbleDeck flooring

BubbleDeck is a biaxial voided concrete slab product that was developed in the 1990's by Danish engineer Jorgen Breuning. The technology is similar to other modern voided slabs such as U-Boot and Cobiax, however it has its distinct advantages. These advantages include decreased construction time, material costs savings and the environmental benefits. Composite steel-concrete construction is an increasingly common construction method in the modern building industry. This process involves utilising the high tensile strength of steel and the high compressive strength of concrete to create composite members with structurally favourable characteristics. In order to join the steel and concrete components, a connection is needed to stop slip occurring at the interface and allow the materials to behave as a single element. The most common connection is the end welded headed shear connector, known more commonly as the shear stud. Shear studs have a recommended design capacity as specified by suppliers and connections are designed according to these capacities. Standards such as Eurocode and Australian Standards have a guide for composite connection design; however, these guides do not pander to new technologies such as BubbleDeck. As such engineers and designers often have difficulty and uncertainty in designing these types of connections. Through analysis of composite connections and BubbleDeck specifications, a series of test specimens has been designed. Specimens were composed of concrete, steel reinforcement, a steel section, shear studs and BubbleDeck void formers. These specimens were tested according to the Eurocode 4 standard to study the interactions of the BubbleDeck voids and the headed shear connectors. Experimental results and observations were recorded during and after the test specimens were tested. Results suggested that the overall shear capacity or BubbleDeck slabs in composite beams was approximately 5 to 10 % less than the capacity of equivalent solid slabs. The observations showed that the proximity of headed shear connectors to voids did not have a significant effect on the capacity of the connection, with respect to the arrangements tested