2020 Volume 66A Pages 841-854
The attempts to use PBL have increased sufficiently in concrete-steel composite structures, provides merits for construction convenience and adequate mechanical performance. There are less numerical studies, primarily focusing on the detailed internal failure mechanism. Understanding the failure mechanism is important for establishing rational design and reinforcement methods. However, the detailed failure process and mechanism are not clear in previous studies. Therefore, it is important to analyze the internal failure behavior of PBL subjected to various constraints, comprehensively using 3D-RBSM as it reproduces the crack propagation behavior, effectively. The simulation results reveal that the 3D-RBSM not only simulates the shear capacity of PBL subjected to confinement and concrete size effect of adjoining blocks but also captures the change in failure mode (splitting or local shear failure).