Mechanical performance of improved PHC pile-to-pile cap connection

The prestressed high strength concrete piles were reinforced with non-prestressed steel bar (PRC pile), reinforced with steel fiber concrete pile (SFPHC), or confined with CFRP, respectively in this paper. The improved PHC pile-to-pile cap connections were tested to study the hysteretic behavior, energy dissipation and rigidity degeneration. The test results show that steel fiber can improve the energy dissipation, as a result, the rigidities of the three types of PHC piles are increased, especially the PRC piles. The finite element software ABAQUS was used to simulate the nonlinear behavior of pile-cap connections under monotonic load. The comparison between analytical and experimental results shows that the proposed modeling technique is capable of accurately describing the behavior of the connections. On this basis, a full loading history analysis was carried out, and it is found that the stresses of prestressed bars are reduced.