Experimental and Numerical Study of Composite Steel-concrete Truss Element Under Cyclic and Static Load

The work contains a description of studies of composite steel-concrete truss element under cyclic and static load which maximal value was increased from stage to stage up to a moment when the system lost its load capacity. During the loading process, truss deflections and slips between a concrete slab and steel top chord of the truss were measured. Also two methods of non-destructive testing were used between the particular loading cycles for an evaluation of stiffness decrease of truss elements resulting from increasing material defects, i.e. an analysis of free vibrations of the system and ultrasonic tomography tests were conducted. A common analysis of all experimental results aided additionally by FEM calculations enabled a complex evaluation of efficiency of using two aforementioned non-destructive methods in diagnostics of composite steel-concrete truss elements.