Study on constitutive model of shear performance in panel zone of Connections composed of CFSSTCs and steel-concrete composite beams with external diaphragms

This paper presents a finite element analysis (FEA) model for the panel zone of connections between concrete filled square steel tubular columns (CFSSTCs) and steel concrete composite beams with external diaphragms under cyclic loading. Six composite connection tests are adopted to validate the feasibility of the FEA model. Parametric studies are carried out to study the influence of the following parameters on the shearing capacity and deformation in panel zone: ratio of width to thickness of column, the concrete strength of panel zone, the axial load ratio of the column and the ratio of depth to width of panel zone. A constitutive model of shear performance is then proposed for the panel zone of the composite connections. The proposed model is featured with a favorable accuracy, and could be applied to predict and evaluate the shearing degenerate and destruction of large-scale and complex composite connections.