Date: April 23, 2008

Time: 4:00 – 7:00 p.m.

Minutes of Composite Construction Committee Meeting

ASCE Structures Congress – Vancouver Canada, Hyatt Regency, Stanley Room

Members Attending (listed based on seating arrangement):

  1. Judy Liu – Chair (Purdue University)
  2. Pat Fortney (Clemson University)
  3. Gustavo Parra (Univ. of Michigan)
  4. Amit Varma – Secretary (Purdue University)
  5. Ricardo Medina (University of New Hampshire)
  6. Iraj Mamaghani (University of North Dakota)
  7. Jerome Hajjar (Univ. of Illinois)
  8. Gian A. Rassati (Univ. of Cincinnati)
  9. Roberto Leon (Georgia Tech)

Visitors:

  1. Anil Agarwal (Purdue University)
  2. Mohammad Khavanan (University of North Dakota)
  3. Brian Uy (University of Western Sydney, Australia)
  4. Sherif El-Tawil (Univ. of Michigan)
  5. David Darwin (Univ. of Kansas)
  1. The committee chair and attendees introduced themselves.
  2. The last meeting minutes were approved by the committee.
  3. The committee meeting agenda was approved as is.
  4. The committee has co-sponsored a session at the current 2008 Structures Congress. This session titled – Fire Behavior of Steel and Composite Structures - was held on April 25, 2008 at 10:30 a.m. The session was very well attended; the four presentations were very interesting.
  5. The committee discussed the next Structures Congress, which will be held in Austin, TX. The deadline for submitting session abstracts is June 10.
  6. The committee website has been created by the chair, and is located at:
  7. The committee discussed the website and the possibility of hosting the report developed by theSteel-FRP Composite State-of-the-Art effort at the website.
  8. Drs. El-Tawil and Harries submitted an article based on the state-of-the-art report to the Journal of Composite Construction. The article was declined because a very similar article is going to be published in the near future.
  9. The committee discussed the possibility of developing an introductory article for steel-FRP composite structures on wikipedia.org, and providing a resource link to the complete report at the committee website. There was some support for this idea.

Action Items:

(a) The authors of the state-of-the-art-report will develop an introductory article for steel-FRP
composite structures on wikipedia.org.

(b) The committee chair will place the complete report on the committee website.

(c) The committee chair will add the committee description and mission to the website.

(d) The committee chair will link the current website to a location / link provided by ASCE or have the website hosted by ASCE.

  1. Dr. Rassati presented the details of the paper abstracts (and topics) received for the 2008 Composite Construction VI Conference. The conference will be held at the Devil’s Thumb Ranch in Colorado from July 20-24, 2008. The conference committee received 82 paper abstracts. The topics were as follows: 18 analysis, 7 seismic, 1 new materials, 10 shear connections, 5 composite floors, 12 composite columns, 4 hybrid elements, 10 bridges, 15 design and application.
    There was some discussion of the paper topics and themes. Some of those papers will be sent to the composite construction committee members for review. ASCCS will be holding a composite construction conference in Leeds, England, July 8-10, 2009. There was some discussion of the emerging research facilities and trends from China and Korea.

Action Item:

Brian Uy has a postdoc who will attend a conference in China in October; he will forward what he learns about emerging research on composite construction in China.

  1. The committee received an update related to the possible joint ASCE-ACI committee. The new chair of ACI 335 is Paul Ziehl, and the new chair of ACI 318 is Randy Poston.

Action Item: Gustavo as a representative of the composite construction committee will discuss joint ASCE and ACI 335 committee activities further with Paul Ziehl (add as an agenda item for ACI 335).

Separately, there was discussion of a task group that has been evaluating the future of composite column provisions maintained individually by ACI and AISC, first by identifying discrepancies between ACI and AISC.

ACI 318 does not wish to relinquish control of the composite column provisions.

However, it was noted that the differences between the two provisions are starting to diminish, based on the changes that were made in the AISC 2005 provisions.

  1. The committee members discussed some of the current research they are doing in composite structures area.
  2. Pat Fortney and others (G.A. Rassati, Bahraam Shahrooz, Kent Harries) are researching replaceable fuses for coupling beams of hybrid composite shear walls.
  3. Amit Varma and others are studying the fire behavior of composite floor systems. His students (Anil Agarwal and others) at Purdue University are also looking at storey collapse and modeling composite beam behavior under fire loading.
  4. Iraj Mamaghani is looking at the cyclic stress-strain behavior of confined concrete in steel tubes.
  5. Brian Uy is researching trapezoidal deep decks, strength models for shear studs, CFT columns under impact loads and composite beams under different loading conditions.
  6. Sherif El-Tawil has just completed a project evaluating steel-FRP composites for prevention of local buckling of braces in BRB frames. He is also looking at the collapse of composite slabs when the gravity column is lost.
  7. Jerry Hajjar and Roberto Leon are working on a NEES project to update composite system seismic provisions and computational models. Jerry Hajjar has just completed the development and verification of a comprehensive mixed formulation finite element for CFT beam-columns. The NEES project will involve experimental testing of slender CFT columns that fail by elastic or inelastic buckling combined with flexure. The testing will be conducted at the MAST facility in Summer and Fall 2008. SRC beam-columns will be tested later next year. One of the project goals is to determine effective EI for flexural buckling of composite columns. Another goal is to obtain experimental behavior and data for different loading paths.
  1. The next Structures Congress (2009) will be held in Austin, Texas. The following session proposals were discussed at the meeting:
  • A session summarizing the research presented at the Composite Construction VI conference. This would include current research on composite columns, beams, walls, and shear studs. Gian Andrea Rassati will lead the effort to develop the session proposal.
  • A session focusing on practitioner perspectives and design issues for composite design and construction. Amit Varma to lead the effort. He will contact Larry Griffis, Jerry Hajjar, Roberto Leon, and Gian Andrea Rassati to identify practitioners to invite.
  • A session focusing on the influence of composite beams and floors on the collapse behavior of building structures. Amit Varma will lead the effort. He will put together a list of potential speakers and contact Sherif El-Tawil for additional help if needed.

Action Items:

Gian Andrea Rassati and Amit Varma will take the lead and develop session proposals with the help of other committee members as outlined above. The session proposals and paper abstracts are due by June 10, 2008. The submission website is

  1. Jerry Hajjar presented the development of new shear connector design provisions, currently being balloted by the AISC Specifications committee. He summarized the current shear connector provisions from AISC, ACI, and PCI specifications, and contrasted them with the new provisions.
  1. The committee discussed the special project report titled - Recommendations for Seismic Design of Hybrid Coupled Walls. The primary question was regarding the target plan for the document. Possibilities included: (i) submitting it as a summary paper to ASCE, and (ii) publishing as a special project report.

The committee discussed their review of the report. Some issues were identified regarding reinforcement design in the coupling beam-wall connection areas and wall-roof connection areas. The composite coupling beam equation 15b was also discussed briefly.

Action Items:

The committee members will submit their written comments to the chair within 2 weeks. These comments will be compiled and submitted to the authors for consideration. The goal is to get the report publicized and submitted on par with other, similar ASCE documents.

  1. Gian Andrea Rassati, William Clawson, and Gustavo Parra-Montesinos are rotating off the membership this year.

Action Items:

The committee will try to recruit some new practitioner members (for example, Will Jacobs from Stan Lindsey and Associates). The chair will send out an e-mail request for other nominations this summer.

  1. Paper and special achievement awards will be due this Fall.

Action Items:

The committee will think about possible nominees. The chair will send e-mail on this topic later in the summer.

  1. Other announcements were made regarding committee meeting attendance and SEI standards committees. Starting this Congress, those attending committee meetings only can get a complimentary registration allowing admittance to breakfasts, refreshment breaks, and the exhibit hall. Also, participation in SEI standards committees is being encouraged. Those interested should go to the SEI website for the list of committees and the application.
  1. Next meeting: date and time for meeting at next year’s Structures Congress will be determined by e-mail vote.

Prepared and Submitted by,

Amit Varma

Assistant Professor

Purdue University

West Lafayette, IN 47907.