Analytical modeling of nonlinear behavior of composite stub-girders

This paper presents an inelastic analytical model for modeling the nonlinear behavior of partially composite stub-girder under midspan concentrated load with partially end joint stiffness. The method treats the stub-girder as a beam with three distinct layers, the top and bottom layers behave according to the normal beam bending theory, while the middle layer is a shear layer without any bending stiffness. At the interface between the steel and concrete elements, the headed stud shear connectors are modeled as linear elastic built-in cantilevers. The present method smears the effects of all the contributing shear elements, stubs and studs, along the span. The differential equation for the stub-girder is solved to obtain the general expression of elastic deflection for the case when one concentrated load is applied at the mid-span. Based on the present approach a computer program called “PZA” is developed. The program accounts for nonlinear behavior of concrete and steel materials. The accuracy and reliability of the program are demonstrated by the analysis of three stub girders and one composite beam over the entire loading range up to ultimate load and the results are compared with published experiments. A relatively good agreements with the experimental findings are found. Then a parametric study is carried out to discuss the effect of the initial stiffness of shear connector and the stub height on the behavior of stub-girder.