Experimental tests for improving buildability of construction methods for high‐strength concrete columns in high‐rise buildings

Abstract

High-strength concrete columns have the advantage of increasing the amount of usable area in the building because the cross-section of the columns takes up less space compared with columns using normal strength concrete. However, it is difficult to weld the steel reinforcement and steel members because of the narrow column width due to a decrease in the cross-section of the column, thereby causing construction delay in many cases. In this paper, five construction methods with different details for high-strength reinforced concrete columns are tested to improve the buildability of the columns. Five specimens with different construction details were tested and analyzed based on four aspects: (a) the relationship between load and displacements, (b) strain distributions, (c) axial stiffness, and (d) crack patterns. Specimens were constructed using concrete with a compressive strength of 55 MPa, and the design strength of all five specimens were set to about 10,740 kN. From results of the experiment, the specimen with a reduced number of vertical reinforcements from 24 of HD22 (SD400, Fy = 400 MPa) to 16 of UD22 (SD600, Fy = 600 MPa) was the most effective specimen to improve the buildability of the column without deteriorating the structural performance of the reference specimen. KEYWORDS buildability of columns, construction detail, experimental test, high-rise buildings 1 | INTRODUCTION High-strength concrete columns have the advantage of increasing the amount of usable area in the building because the cross-section of the columns takes up less space compared with columns using normal strength concrete. However, because high-strength concrete columns have high compressive strength, they can show brittle fracture behaviors depending on the method of reinforcement that is used. Therefore, verifying that the columns used in construction have sufficient stiffness and deformation capacity is extremely important. [1][2][3][4][5][6] In addition, when high-strength concrete is used for construction of high-rise buildings, it is difficult to weld the steel reinforcement and steel members because of the narrow column width due to a decrease in the cross-section of the column, thereby causing construction delay in many cases. For example, as shown in Figure 1a, when a high-strength reinforced concrete mega-column of a high-rise building is joined with a steel outrigger at the upper part of the building, many construction problems arise due to the narrowness of the joint. As shown in Figure 1b, the constructability problems that can occur at the junction of the column-outrigger member can be divided into four cases: (a) when the outrigger member is connected to the inside of the column, the vertical reinforcements of the column, and the lateral reinforcements of girders and the slab are placed in a narrow space. The compact arrangement of the reinforcements reduces the constructability (anchor ties in Figure 1b should be welded to the sloping post of the outrigger, but this becomes difficult due to the lack of space). (b) The ...

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