Experimental study of composite light gauge steel and concrete of a plate structure.

In this paper, the application of light gauge steel to composite plate structures was studied experimentally. The light gauge steel section was intended to replace reinforcing bars on the reinforced concrete structures. Observations were conducted for 6 specimens. They were 3 specimens of conventional reinforced concrete structures and the other 3 specimens of composite light gauge steel and concrete ones. All of the specimens had a typical dimension of 300 mm width with 3 variations of the section depths: 80, 100, and 120 mm. The specimens were positioned on the simple supports with a 2000 mm effective span length. Two-point loads loading scheme was subjected to the specimen. The load increased monotonically until the ultimate condition was obtained. The delayed first crack was found on the composite specimens, while on the reinforced concrete, it occurred at the earlier stage of loading. Different types of ultimate conditions were found: compression failure on the uppermost fiber of composite specimen, crack on the pure bending moment and shear spans. As expected, the ultimate load increased linearly as the plate depth increased. Effect of different cross-sectional areas and material's grade between reinforcing bars and the light gauge steel section was considered to obtain equivalent the ultimate load from two different types of the specimens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]