Behavior of Hollow-Core FRP-Concrete-Steel Columns under Static Cyclic Flexural Loading

Abstract

This paper presents the seismic behavior of hollow-core fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP)-concrete-steel (HC-FCS) columns comparable with the conventional RC column. The typical HC-FCS column consists of a concrete shell sandwiched between an outer FRP tube and an inner steel tube. The HC-FCS column represents a compact engineering system; the steel and FRP tubes act together as stay-in-place formworks. The steel tube acts as a flexural and shear reinforcement. This paper studies three large-scale columns—one RC column having a solid cross section and two HC-FCS columns. Each column has an outer diameter of 610 mm (24 in.) and a shear span-to-diameter ratio of 4.0. The steel tube is embedded into the reinforced concrete footing with an embedded length of 1.6 times the steel tube diameter, whereas the FRP tube only confines the concrete shell and truncates at the top of the footing. The HC-FCS columns exhibits high lateral drift reaching 15.2% and fail gradually due to concrete crushing and local steel tube buckling, followed by FRP rupture. The reference RC column fails at a drift of 10.9% due to rebar fracture. Simple beam theory overpredicts the flexural strength of the columns by an average of 9%.