Results from experiments and FEM analysis of the ultimate strength of the composite steel concrete cylindrical shell structure of an open sandwich system are reported. In the experimental investigation, concentrated loading tests were conducted on open sandwich type composite cylindrical shell panels. From the experiments, it was clarified that the composite shell panel under concentrated loading showed punching shear failure, but the composite panels exhibited high load bearing capacity after punching shear failure. In FEM analysis, the deflection and the stress distribution of the models were calculated.
The utilization of a composite steel-concrete shell structure of an open sandwich system for a breakwater, as shown in Fig.1, has the advantage of extended footing length, increased rigidity of the overall structure due to large stiffness, light weight and toughness derived from the curved panel structure. In this paper, the authors carried out investigations into the rigidity and ultimate strength of cylindrical curved open sandwich panels. The research program is composed of experiments and FEM linear analyses. The experiments include a series of static tests under concentrated load. For FEM analysis, three-dimensional composite models were employed to investigate the effect of the curvature and support conditions. The composite curved panels were found to be desirable for the construction of offshore structures because of their excellent safety properties; high load carrying capabilities, and large energy absorption after punching shear faille.
Three types of test panel models shown in Fig.2 were employed for the experiments. The test span and depth were 1500ram, and 150ram, respectively. The ratio of span to depth of a panel is 10. They are approximately a half scaled models of general hybrid type breakwater.
