Behaviour and strength of shear connectors utilising blind bolting

![CDATA[Nowadays, the use of composite steel-concrete structural systems in high rise buildings and bridges is a widespread practice. The flexural strength of composite beams is greatly influenced by the strength and ductility of the shear connectors between the structural steel beam and the concrete slab. Amongst the numerous advantages over the traditional reinforced concrete slabs, are their lightweight and the simplicity with which the steel deck is handled and erected. Even though the concept of composite steel-concrete slabs began in the 1920’s the application did not develop until the 1950’s. More recently, composite steel concrete slabs are becoming increasingly more popular for high rise buildings because they can achieve large spans with little propping and they require less concrete and plywood formwork. Push tests are used in order to study the behaviour of shear connectors. When shear connectors are used in design, one must be able to predict their ability to resist the longitudinal forces that arise between the steel and concrete. It is difficult to predict the strength of shear connectors. The reason is that when the embedded shear connector approaches failure, the behaviour is very complex because of the inelastic deformations in the stud under the combined effects of shear, bending and tension. The concrete surrounding the headed stud shear connectors are subjected to cracks due to high splitting forces caused by shear connectors, and there is the likelihood that a non-ductile failure will occur. If the concrete strength is high, the shear stud fracture will occur prior to concrete failing. The paper herein looks at the behaviour and strength of different shear connectors. Three types of shear connectors were used in the paper. They include headed stud shear connectors, AJAX One Side blind bolts and LINDAPTER Hollo Bolts. In practice, blind bolts are used for beam-column end flush connections, where access is limited to one side only. The ability of blind bolts can be implemented in a composite steel-concrete structure because the experimental studies showed that the blind bolts were well within the required standards. Furthermore, portable and recyclable structures can be developed, hence contributing to sustainability. To investigate the performance of blind bolts, standard push tests were conducted and headed stud shear connectors were conducted which served as a control experiment.]]