Analysis of connections in composite construction under cyclic loading

Composite construction is commonly adopted in major projects now. Large size columns, beams and slabs are made compositely and connected together. Such connections in the past did not take advantage of composite behavior and designed as steel connections. Modern codes make provisions for design and construction of connections compositely. It is, therefore, essential to understand the behavior of such composite connections. This paper is concerned with beam to column composite connection subjected to cyclic loading. Results obtained from the finite element analysis of composite joints tested by other researchers are presented. The beam-to-column connections comprise of end plate welded to the beam and bolted to column flange. Analysis are carried out by finite element analysis through a computer code LUSAS. The connections are modeled with a mesh established as efficient and effective in terms of analysis time and accuracy of the results by a convergence study. The results are presented in the form of moment-rotation curves and the numerical results compared with the corresponding experimental values.