Experimental and numerical study on behaviour of square steel tube confined reinforced concrete stub columns after fire exposure

The behaviour of square steel tube confined reinforced concrete columns after fire exposure was studied experimentally and numerically in this paper. Eighteen stub columns were first heated following the ISO 834 standard fire including both heating and cooling phases, and were subsequently loaded to failure after cooling to ambient temperature. Failure modes, temperatures in specimens, axial load versus deformation curves and strains in steel tube were monitored and discussed. A finite element model was developed using the sequentially coupled thermal-stress analysis method and was validated against tests found in literatures and this study. Parametric study was performed to identify influences of key parameters, where are heating time, cross-sectional dimension, strengths of materials, steel tube to concrete area ratio and reinforcement ratio, on residual capacity and compressive stiffness. Finally, a simplified method is proposed for predicting residual cross-sectional capacity and compressive stiffness of square steel tube confined reinforced concrete columns after fire exposure.