Composite Behaviour of Steel Frames with Precast Concrete Infill Panels

This paper presents preliminary experimental and numerical results of an investigation into the composite behaviour of a steel frame with a precast concrete infill panel (S-PCP) subject to a lateral load. The steel-concrete connections consist of two plates connected with two bolts which are loaded in shear only. The connections are designed for a failure mechanism consisting of ovalisation in the bolt holes due to bearing of the bolts to avoid brittle failure. Experimental pull-out and shear tests on individual frame-panel connections were performed to establish their stiffness and failure load. A full scale experiment was performed on a onestorey one-bay 3 by 3m infilled frame structure horizontally loaded at the top. With the known characteristics of the frame-panel joints from the experiments on individual connections, a numerical analysis was performed on the infilled frame structure taking nonlinear behaviour of the structural components into account. The finite element model yields reasonably accurate results and indicates a connection failure sequence similar to experimental failure