NUMERICAL EVALUATION: STIFFNESS OF CONNECTORS "X" IN COMPOSITE SPECIMEN OF WOOD AND CONCRETE FROM A CYCLICAL LOAD

Abstract

In this paper it was evaluated the stiffness "K" of a composite specimen of wood and concrete, with connectors "X", formed by glued steel bars, type CA-50. The behaviour of the system was numerically evaluated through the use of the software ANSYS, starting from a three-dimensional numeric model with cyclical load applied varying among 40% and 5% (R=0,125) of the static strength of the connections "X", for a total of 20 load cycles applied. The used model considered the physical and geometric nonlinearities, contact elements among surfaces and the wood as an orthotropic material. The results showed that the loss stiffness "K" was of approximately 5% for a single load cycle and the three-dimensional model used supplied good results that agreed with the experimental results. They also are the most important points of the modeling computational strategy developed for the composition of the analyzed numerical model. Keywords: connection stiffness, shear connectors, cyclical loads, composite specimens, computational modeling.