An experimental and numerical study of aluminium-concrete joints and composite beams

The present study investigated the structural behaviour of aluminium-concrete composite (ACC) beams with profiled sheeting by means of conducting four-point bending tests on four ACC beams. In the proposed ACC system, a concrete slab was connected to aluminium girders by mechanical shear connectors developed by the authors of this article. The load-slip behaviour of the connections was characterised in push-out tests of connectors. In addition, non-linear 3D finite element (FE) models of the tested joints and composite beams were developed and verified against the experimental results. The comparison between the experimental and numerical results indicates that the adopted 3D model can capture the response of the ACC joints and composite beams fairly well. (C) 2018 Politechnika Wroclawska. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.