Behaviour of high strength concrete-filled slender RHS steel tubes

An experimental study of the behaviour of high strength concrete-filled slender rectangular hollow section (RHS) tubes under the combined actions of axial compression and bending moment is presented. A total of 26 specimens were tested. The main parameters considered in the test were slenderness ratio, depth-to-breadth ratio, steel-to-concrete area ratio and eccentricity-to-depth ratio. The experimental results showed that the ultimate capacity of test specimens decreased rapidly with increase of slenderness ratio and eccentricity-to-depth ratio. For the specimens with depth-to-thickness ratio larger than 50, local buckling failure occurred prior to the ultimate capacity. A nonlinear analysis program, BC, was developed to analyze the behaviour of high strength concrete-filled RHS tubes. A comparison for ultimate capacity showed that the theoretical results agreed very well with the experimental results. The depth-to-breadth ratio (varying from 1.0 to 1.6) showed little influence on the stability capacity of the specimens. The comparison of the experimental results with the results calculated by the design equations in the codes, such as LRFD, EC4 and AU showed that EC4 closely predicts the ultimate capacity of the specimens.