Ultimate strength behavior of steel-concrete-steel sandwich beams with ultra-lightweight cement composite, Part 1: Experimental and analytical study

Ultra-lightweight cement composite (ULCC) with a compressive strength of 60 MPa and density of $1450kg/m^3$ has been developed and used in the steel-concrete-steel (SCS) sandwich structures. ULCC was adopted as the core material in the SCS sandwich composite beams to reduce the overall structural weight. Headed shear studs working in pairs with overlapped lengths were used to achieve composite action between the core material and steel face plates. Nine quasi-static tests on this type of SCS sandwich composite beams were carried out to evaluate their ultimate strength performances. Different parameters influencing the ultimate strength of the SCS sandwich composite beams were studied and discussed. Design equations were developed to predict the ultimate resistance of the cross section due to pure bending, pure shear and combined action between shear and moment. Effective stiffness of the sandwich composite beam section is also derived to predict the elastic deflection under service load. Finally, the design equations were validated by the test results.