Investigating the structural behaviour of concrete filled ‘CAN’ under axial loading

Over the past one hundred years or so, the capacity of columns for structural support has continuously been improving through considerable research and innovation efforts. The R&D activities have particularly been inspired by the western mining industries, which require stable and economic supporting columns for mining activities. Concrete filled tube (CFT) columns have been developed for this particularly supporting role because of their improved strength, ductility and stiffness as well as significantly reduced cost. In the past, primary tube material was steel for confining the concrete column, which has added significant advantages to the columns. Recently, fibre reinforcement polymer (FRP) has increasingly been used for tube material because of a number of its advantages over steels such as lightness, and reduced installing and maintenance costs among the other advantages. This paper presents an overview of the studies on the application of FRP in structural engineering at Central Queensland University. Experiments have been carried out to investigate the behaviour of concrete filled FRP ‘CAN’ under uni-axial compressive loading. The behaviour of concrete filled FRP ‘CAN’ was investigated by varying the slenderness ratios of CFT. The results are analysed and discussed in terms of the effects of both slenderness ratio and lateral confinement resulted from the FRP ‘CAN’ on the stress state and therefore, on failure mode and strength behaviour.