Research on Whole-Process Tensile Behavior of Headed Studs in Steel–Concrete Composite Structures

The headed studs have been widely applied in steel–concrete composite structures as shear connectors. However, the tensile performance of headed studs is also key to the structural performance in many cases such as the semi-rigid composite joints including steel beam–concrete wall joint and steel column–base joint. Therefore, this study presents experimental and analytical study on the whole-process tensile behavior of headed studs. Tests on a total of 33 pullout specimens are first conducted. The tensile capacity and load–deformation behavior of the anchorage concrete, which dominates the structural performance of headed studs, are thoroughly analyzed. In addition, test data in the literature are collected for quantitatively evaluating the influence of embedment depth, bearing area, boundary conditions, and concrete strength on the tensile behavior of the anchorage concrete. On the basis of the influence evaluation, an analytical model represented by a piecewise function is proposed to describe the whole-process load–deformation behavior of the anchorage concrete and validated through the comparison between the predicted curves and all collected experimental results. Then the proposed model is applied to simulate the rotational behavior of the typical semi-rigid joint anchored by headed studs, which takes the contribution of the anchorage concrete into consideration, and is verified by experimental results. The research findings indicate that tensile behavior of anchorage concrete is crucial to the structural performance of semi-rigid joints, even for headed studs with large embedment depth and bearing area.