Design Calculation for Concrete-Filled Steel Tube under Soft Lateral Impact

In recent decades, the rapid development of transportation construction has increased the possibility of concrete-filled steel tubes (CFSTs) subjected to soft lateral impact. Some kinds of deviation may still exist between the soft impact process and its design prediction due to frequent safety accidents. To improve the prediction accuracy, this paper contrasted the current soft impact design with the experimental impact processes of CFSTs. The current design is represented by the method and route in Eurocode-1 Actions on structures, which belongs to the one-step type. Extra parameters were added to the one-step method to describe the inertia effect of CFST. According to the experiments and predictions, the soft impact process contains two stages, which are the initial peak stage (IPS) and the stable stage (SS). The current one-step method is consistent with SS but incorrect in IPS and its accuracy is related to the proportion of IPS and SS. An empirical formula, based on the weight of IPS, is summarized to evaluate the overall error of the one-step method in the soft impact design of CFST. This error is due to the unreasonable assumption of the inertial effect in IPS. For the demands of an accurate design in IPS, a new technical route is proposed, consisting of two steps: qualitative analysis and two-stage calculation. The qualitative analysis achieved an approximate quantitative division of IPS and SS, and provided the design loads for the two-stage calculation. The two-stage calculation supplemented the prediction of the inertia effect in IPS and independently estimated the resistances and responses of CFST in the two stages. The above qualitative analysis and two-stage calculation constituted the two-step method and its accuracy and applicability are generally better than that of the one-step design.

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