Experimental characterisation of Perfobond shear connectors through a new one-sided push-out test

In steel-concrete composite beams, the perfobond shear connectors (PSCs) are commonly utilised as an alternative to the widely used headed studs, as the latter have limited shear capacity and susceptible to fatigue problems. The structural assessment of the PSCs is typically obtained experimentally, and mainly through a type of destructive test known as push-out test (POT). POT specimen typically consists of an I- steel section attached to two concrete slabs through the connectors under investigation, the slabs are then simultaneously tested by the application of a direct shear force to the steel section until the fracture of the specimen is reached. The shear strength of PSCs can be evaluated from the POT results. However, the weaker of the two concrete slabs tend to fail before the other side, which thus inevitably affects the results. In this paper, an efficient one-sided POT (OSPOT) is used to characterise the behaviour of the PSCs in composite steel-concrete beams. POT and OSPOT specimens are similar, but the shear force in the OSPOT is directly applied to one slab each test. As a part of this study, ten OSPOT have been carried out to investigate the behaviour and the shear resistance of the PSC. The results were compared against POT results from other researchers and the predictions offered by several shear resistance equations. It has been found that the OSPOT results are consistent with the analytical predictions offered by these expressions compared to the previous research using POT. Among the key advantages of the proposed OSPOT procedure: similar to the traditional POT, it is possible to quantify the relationship between applied loads and displacements in the shear connectors, which is the most important information for the structural design of composite steel-concrete beams; it is effectively doubled the number of results for the same research resources; the fabrication of the samples is simplified.