Headed Shear Studs versus High-Strength Bolts in Prefabricated Composite Decks

Prefabricated steel and concrete composite decks are an interesting option to improve competitiveness and sustainability of the composite structures. Longitudinal shear connection is usually established by grouped headed studs, but possible alternative solution is to use bolted shear connectors. Welded headed studs and bolts (grade 8.8) are experimentally examined in the push-out tests (four tests on each). The same arrangement and dimensions of shear connectors (16 mm diameter and 100 mm height above flange) are considered and their resistances and behaviour are compared. Experimental results showed that headed studs and bolted shear connectors have similar shear resistance, while headed studs are more ductile. FEA is performed by ABAQUS/Explicit solver with damage material models to get more insight into behaviour of the specimens. FEA shows rather good agreement with experimental results. Influence of the bolt to hole clearance on the behaviour of specimens with bolted shear connectors is analysed and discussed.