Experimental and numerical investigation on the shear behaviour of friction-welded bar-plate connections embedded in concrete

Friction-welded bar-plate connections are a basic structural component of Bi-steel steel-concrete-steel sandwich construction. In Bi-steel members, the bar-plate connections, embedded in concrete, are subject to tension, shear and bending. The static and fatigue behaviour of the embedded connections subjected to bar tension is described in another paper [Xie M, Chapman JC. Static and fatigue tensile strength of friction-welded bar-plate connections embedded in concrete. Journal of Constructional Steel Research [in press]]. This paper presents experimental and numerical studies on the static behaviour of the friction-welded connections with the bar loaded in shear. Finite element analysis is carried out to examine the effects of variations in geometric and material parameters. The experimental results are used to derive an empirical equation for predicting the shear strength of embedded connections, and compared with existing test results and code specifications. Further papers will describe fatigue behaviour of the embedded connections subjected to bar shear, and static and fatigue tests on Bi-steel beams.