Avaliação de pilares tubulares de aço preenchidos com concreto.

Abstract

Structural elements made of seam hollow profiles have been increasingly more adopted by the construction industry due to the substantial advances achieved in the welding and fabrication processes. The seam hollow sections are considerably less expensive than their seamless equivalents and are also readily available in long continuous lengths. Despite these facts the current structural design standards still contains recommendations for seam hollow sections based in test results performed with sections produced with outdated fabrication processes. These design procedures are even more conservative when applied to composite tubular seam elements inhibiting their worldwide widespread adoption. This thesis presents an experimental campaign performed to investigate the structural behaviour of concrete filled composite columns made with seam rectangular hollow profiles. The experiments involved columns with: only steel sections, concrete filled and concrete filled and additional reinforcing bars. The main aim of the tests was to identify the contribution of each component in the overall structural response i.e., steel profile, confined concrete and reinforcing bars. The results enable an evaluation of the design recommendations present in Eurocode 4 aiming to determine less conservative buckling curves to be used for the investigated composite columns made of seam rectangular square hollow sections.