Numerical investigation of steel-timber composite floors with flush end-plate connection

Steel-timber composite floors have received much attention in the past years due to their lightweight, high construction and dismantling speed, low pollution and energy consumption. These floors consist of timber slab that is connected to steel beam by shear connectors. This paper investigates the behavior of steel-timber composite floors, which have flush end-plate beam-to-column connections. To achieve this, three-dimensional finite element models were prepared from several laboratory specimens and then validated against each other. The numerical and laboratory results were compared and validated, which shows the appropriate accuracy of the assumptions used for modeling specimens. In the following, parametric studies were conducted to investigate the factors affecting stiffness, strength, and rotational capacity such as type, diameter, and spacing of shear connectors, thickness and width of timber slab, the thickness of flush end-plate, and beam-to-column bolt size. Lastly, several mathematical formulas were presented to estimate the moment-rotation response of semi-rigid steel-timber composite connections.