RESEARCH ARTICLE
The Behavior of Concrete-Filled Single and Double-Skin uPVC Tubular Columns Under Axial Compression Loads
Abraham M. Woldemariam1, *, Walter O. Oyawa2, Timothy Nyomboi3
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2019Volume: 13
First Page: 164
Last Page: 177
Publisher ID: TOBCTJ-13-164
DOI: 10.2174/1874836801913010164
Article History:
Received Date: 05/05/2019Revision Received Date: 23/07/2019
Acceptance Date: 26/07/2019
Electronic publication date: 30/08/2019
Collection year: 2019
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Background:
There is an increased demand for high-performance materials in the construction industry due to high cost, difficulty of sourcing and shortcomings of the existing construction materials. Some of the deficiencies are corrosion of steel, brittle failure and rapid deterioration of reinforced concrete structures in a harsh environment. Nowadays, there is also a shift from one material to another due to the difficulty of sourcing i.e. timber electric poles to concrete poles due to the difficulty of sourcing. These situations have triggered the interest to develop an alternative structural system.
Objective:
This paper presents the behavior of unconfined concrete, Concrete-Filled Single Skin uPVC Tubular (CFSUT) and concrete-filled double skin uPVC tubular (CFDUT) members under axial compression loads.
Method:
The unconfined concrete cylinders, CFSUT and CFDUT specimens were prepared from a concrete class of C25 and tested using a UTM machine at a rate of 0.2MPa/s. The parameters considered included thickness to diameter ratio (2t/D), aspect ratio (h/D) and hollow ratio (d/D). Also, a model was developed to predict the peak strength of CFSUT and CFDUT specimens.
Results:
The result shows that both CFSUT and CFDUT specimens exhibited improved strength, ductility, and energy absorption capacity. For CFSUT and CFSUT specimens, the strength, ductility, and energy absorption capacity increased by more than 1.32, 3.75 and 14.75 times compared to the unconfined concrete specimens, respectively. It is found that the strength decreased as the h/D and d/D ratios increased. The result also shows that the strain of CFSUT and CFDUT at the peak strength increased by more than 3.16 times compared to the unconfined concrete specimens. The proposed model accurately predicted the peak strength with AAE of 2.13%.
Conclusion:
The uPVC confinement provided a remarkable improvement on the strength, ductility and energy absorption of concrete. Therefore, uPVC tubes can be used as a confining material for bridge piers, piles, electric poles, and building columns to increase strength, ductility and energy absorption of concrete structures.
