Keywords: arch, concrete-filled steel tubular section, creep of core concrete, crown-pin, time-dependent..

Concrete-filled steel tubular (CFST) arches are widely used in engineering structures, particularly in bridge construction. The shrinkage and creep of the concrete core un- der a sustained load are inevitable, which together with the geometric nonlinearity affects the time-dependent behaviour of CFST arches significantly. In some cases arches are built by joining two separate curvilinear segments together at the crown, thereby reducing the arch size to meet transport requirements and to create a pin at the arch crown. Because of the pin at the crown, the structural response, of a fixed CFST arch with a pin at its crown, to loading and to the shrinkage and creep of the concrete core is different from that of a fixed arch without any pin along its length. This paper investigates the effects of the crown pin on the linear and nonlinear analyses of fixed CFST circular arches under a sustained central concentrated load. It is shown that the crown-pin have significant effects on the time-dependent in-plane structural be- haviour of fixed CFST arches. The time-dependent radial and axial displacements, as well as the bending moment, increase substantially with time. It is also shown that the increases of the time-dependent displacements, axial forces and bending moments of singly-pinned CFST arches predicted by the non-linear analysis are much greater than those predicted by the linear analysis. This indicates that the conventional linear anal- ysis underestimates the time-dependent increases of the radial and axial displacements of singly-pinned CFST arches.

purchase the full-text of this paper (price £20)

go to the previous paper
go to the next paper
return to the table of contents
return to the book description
purchase this book (price £65 +P&P)