Behaviour and resistance of hollow and concrete-filled mild steel columns due to transverse impact loading

This paper presents the behaviour of hollow and concrete-filled mild steel tubular columns under static and impact loading. A total of three test series have been carried out recently at the University of Western Sydney and the University of Wollongong to investigate the performance of steel hollow and concrete-filled steel tube (CFST) columns subjected to static as well as impact loading. The test results reported in this paper are from the first test series, where mild steel was used and no axial load was applied to the columns. In the next two series, the effects of a combined axial and transverse impact loads, the steel type, as well as the location of the impact loading, were considered. At the same time, steel impact property tests using a split Hopkinson's pressure bar were conducted at Hunan University, China. These test results are also reported in this paper. This paper also reports detailed results from a numerical model using ABAQUS to simulate those static and impact experiments. A non-linear finite element modelling explicit time domain dynamic approach has been used for the simulation. The main objective of this paper is to compare the performance of experimental results with numerical results for mild steel hollow and CFST columns and to provide design guidance. Moreover, the behaviour of in-filled tubes under impact loading is also compared with that of hollow sections. Generally, a reasonable level of agreement has been observed between the numerical and experimental results.