Analysis of composite steel-concrete beams using a refined high-order beam theory

A finite element model is presented for the analysis of composite steel-concrete beams based on a refined high-order theory. The employed theory satisfies all the kinematic and stress continuity conditions at the layer interfaces and considers effects of the transverse normal stress and transverse flexibility. The global displacement components, described by polynomial or combinations of polynomial and exponential expressions, are superposed on local ones chosen based on the layerwise or discrete-layer concepts. The present finite model does not need the incorporating any shear correction factor. Moreover, in the present C-1-continuous finite element model, the number of unknowns is independent of the number of layers. The proposed finite element model is validated by comparing the present results with those obtained from the three-dimensional (3D) finite element analysis. In addition to correctly predicting the distribution of all stress components of the composite steel-concrete beams, the proposed finite element model is computationally economic.