Analysis and design of short FRP-confined concrete-encased arbitrarily shaped steel columns under biaxial loading

Abstract

The FRP-confined concrete-encased steel column is a new form of hybrid column, which integrates advantages of all the constituent materials. Its structural performance, including load carrying capacity, ductility, and corrosion resistance, has been demonstrated to be excellent by limited experimental investigation. Currently, no systematic procedure, particularly for that with reinforced structural steel of arbitrary shapes, has been proposed for the sectional analysis and design for such novel hybrid columns under biaxial loading. The present paper aims at filling this research gap by proposing an approach for the rapid section analysis and providing rationale basis for FRP-confined concrete-encased arbitrarily shaped steel columns. A robust iterative scheme has been used with a traditional so-called fiber element method. The presented numerical examples demonstrated the validity and accuracy of the proposed approach.