Experimental Study On Behaviour Of Precast Beam Column Connection

Abstract

There is increasing trend towards construction of buildings using precast concrete during recent past. The main concept of precast concrete construction is that all the components of structures are produced in controlled environment and it is being transported to the site. At site such individual components are just connected by some means. This leads to major advantages like; reduced formwork and scaffolding, speedy construction, less requirement of skill labour and better quality as compared to normal reinforced concrete construction. Because of such advantages the precast concrete construction is being adopted world-wide including India. In precast concrete construction, connections are the weakest link of the structure. It is also evident that major collapse of precast building was taken place because of connection failure. Therefore it is very important to study the performance of connection between beam and column. In this study, behaviour of dry and wet precast beam column connection is studied under a static loading. In precast beam-column connections adopted for this study, beam is connected to column with corbel using (i) dowel bar with cleat angle and (ii) welded wet connection. Load is applied with the help of hydraulic jack of 250 kN at the free end of beam. The experimental results of the precast specimens have been compared with that of the monolithic connection. The performance of the precast connections in terms of the load-displacement behaviour and ultimate load carrying capacity were compared with that of the monolithic beam-column connection.