Experimental Study of Ultra Shallow Floor Beams (USFB) with Perforated Steel Sections

ABSTRACT: In modern building construction design, floor spans are becoming longer. Hence, steel framed structures have become more competitive when compared with traditional reinforced concrete framed buildings. In order to minimise the structural section of the composite sections, and for economic reasons, steel perforated beams are designed to act compositely with the floor slab. When the concrete slab lies within the steel flanges, as in the Ultra Shallow Floor Beam (USFB), there is an additional benefit when considering fire resistance. The aim of this study is to investigate the contribution of the concrete in composite cellular beams in the case where the concrete slab lies between the beam flanges of a steel section, when resisting vertical shear forces. The concrete between the flanges enhances the load-carrying capacity by providing a load path to transfer the shear force. Four specimens of steel-concrete composite beams with web openings in the steel section were tested in this study. One bare steel section with web openings was also tested as a comparison. This is the first such investigation of the failure mode under shear resistance (Vierendeel action) of the Ultra Shallow Floor Beam. In the test specimens, the web opening diameter is 76% of the beam depth, which is the largest currently available. This represents the worst case in terms of Vierendeel bending forces generated in the vicinity of the web openings. The smaller the hole is, the easier it is for the trapped concrete between the flanges to transfer shear across the opening. The results from the composite beam tests show a significant increase in shear resistance. The percentage of the shear capacity improvement of the particular case is presented herein as well as the failure mode of the composite beams. The shear enhancement demonstrated in this study has been utilised software that is used in design practice

Behaviour and design of composite beams subjected to negative bending and compression

This paper investigates the behaviour of steel–concrete composite beams subjected to the combined effects of negative bending and axial compression. Six full-scale tests were conducted on composite beams subjected to negative moment while compression was applied simultaneously. Following the tests, a nonlinear finite element model was developed and calibrated against the experimental results. The model was found to be capable of predicting the nonlinear response and the ultimate failure modes of the tested beams. The developed finite element model was further used to carry out a series of parametric analyses on a range of composite sections commonly used in practice. It was found that, when a compressive load acts in the composite section, the negative moment capacity of a composite beam is significantly reduced and local buckling in the steel beam is more pronounced, compromising the ductility of the section. Rigid plastic analysis based on sectional equilibrium can reasonably predict the combined strength of a composite section and, thus, can be used conservatively in the design practice. Based on the experimental outcomes and the finite element analyses a simplified design model is proposed for use in engineering practice

Behaviour of concrete filled stainless steel elliptical hollow sections

This paper presents the behaviour and design of axially loaded concrete filled stainless steel elliptical hollow sections. The experimental investigation was conducted using normal and high strength concrete of 30 and 100 MPa. The current study is based on stub column tests and is therefore limited to cross-section capacity. Based on the existing design guidance in Eurocode 4 for composite columns, the proposed design equations use the continuous strength method to determine the strength of the stainless steel material. It is found to provide the most accurate and consistent prediction of the axial capacity of the composite concrete filled stainless steel elliptical hollow sections due largely to the more precise assessment of the contribution of the stainless steel tube to the composite resistance

Associate Higgs and Gauge Boson Production at Hadron Colliders in a Model with Vector Resonances

Motivated by new models of dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking that predict a light composite higgs boson, we build an effective lagrangian which describes the Standard Model (with a light Higgs) and vector resonances. We compute the cross section for the associate production of a higgs and a gauge boson. For some values of model parameters we find that the cross section is significantly enhanced with respect to the Standard Model. This enhancement is similar at the LHC and the Tevatron for the same range of resonance mass

Phenomenology of excited doubly charged heavy leptons at LHC

We consider the production at the LHC of exotic composite leptons of charge Q=+2e. Such states are allowed in composite models which contain extended isospin multiplets (Iw=1 and Iw=3/2). These doubly charged leptons couple with Standard Model [SM] fermions via gauge interactions, thereby delineating and restricting their possible decay channels. We discuss the production cross section at the LHC of L++ (p p --> L++, l-) and concentrate on the leptonic signature deriving from the cascade decays L++ --> W+, l+ --> l+, l+, \nu_l i.e. p p --> l-, l+, l+, \nu_l showing that the invariant mass distribution of the like-sign dilepton has a sharp end point corresponding to excited lepton mass m*. We find that the sqrt{s}=7 TeV run is sensitive at the 3-sigma (5-sigma) level to a mass of the order of 600 GeV if L=10 fb^-1 (L=20 fb^-1). The sqrt{s}=14 TeV run can reach a sensitivity at 3-sigma (5-sigma) level up to m*=1 TeV for L=20 fb^-1 (L=60 fb^-1).Comment: Contains a new section (section IV) that discusses pair production of the exotic doubly charged leptons. Version to appear in the Physical Review

Energy dependence of the entanglement entropy of composite boson (quasiboson) systems

Bipartite composite boson (quasiboson) systems, which admit realization in terms of deformed oscillators, were considered in our previous paper from the viewpoint of entanglement characteristics. These characteristics, including entanglement entropy and purity, were expressed through the relevant deformation parameter for different quasibosonic states. On the other hand, it is of interest to present the entanglement entropy and likewise the purity as function of energy for those states. In this work, the corresponding dependencies are found for different states of composite bosons realized by deformed oscillators and, for comparison, also for the hydrogen atom viewed as composite boson. The obtained results are expressed graphically and their implications discussed.Comment: 10 pages, 14 figures; v2: introduction, conclusions rewritten, one section (on purity VS energy) and a number of refs. added; v3: minor changes in order to match journal version. Accepted in J. Phys.