Experimental Study on Compressive Strength of Centrally Loaded Concrete Filled Square Tubular Steel Columns

Concrete filled steel tube column has a large load carrying capacity through its steel and concrete interaction which makes it useful in construction. However, it has not been used often in a practical construction field. This is partly due to the non-destructive inspection method for concrete filling which has yet to be established. Furthermore, there are the lack of test data and a practical method in evaluating the ultimate load carrying capacity of concrete filled steel tube column. This paper will attempt to predict the ultimate strength of short concrete filled square tubular steel columns through conducting several tests. To accumulate the new test data on concrete filled steel tube columns, a total of 42 specimens of steel tubular columns were monotonically tested under concentric axial force, having the slenderness ratio(), width-thickness ratio(d/t=25.0, 33.3) and concrete strengths(). The hollow sections and concrete filled steel columns were compared to check the lateral confinded effects by steel tube. Through these test results, we propose a coefficient k=3.64 for the strength evaluation formula(10) of concrte filled tubular steel short columns.