Standardization and Testing of Embedded Plates for Design, Fabrication, and Construction Economy

• Author / Creator

  Chin, Ian Chong-Xian

• Embedded plates are commonly used to facilitate connecting structural steel members to reinforced concrete building elements such as walls and columns. Due to a lack of readily available industry-wide standard embedded plate designs, embedded plates are often custom designed for each project. This leads to many inefficiencies in the design, fabrication, and installation stages of the construction process. Additionally, the current Canadian design standard for concrete structures, CSA A23.3:19, requires many assumptions when evaluating embedded plate capacity, leading to inconsistency among designers. This research project aims to improve the efficiency of the embedded plate construction process by proposing standard embedded plates, and then testing selected embedded plates to verify the predicted capacities and key design assumptions.
  Three standard embedded plates having four, six or eight end-welded stud anchors, with design tables developed using CSA A23.3:19, are proposed through collaboration with industry partners involved in the construction process. A small number of plate configurations were chosen to cover a wide variety of common placement and loading situations to improve the simplicity of the design guide. Also, the four- and six-anchor proposed standard embedded plates with shear tab connections were placed at four distances from the concrete edge (75, 125, 175, 250 mm) and tested in shear towards the edge. From the eight full-scale test results, A23.3 was deemed adequate in predicting the failure loads if the connection eccentricity, caused by the gap between the bolt line on the shear tab and the exposed surface of the plate, is considered in the capacity predictions. A test-to-predicted ratio of 0.92 was found when not considering connection eccentricity, compared to 1.11 when considering it. Additionally, embedded plate rotation during testing (0.01 to 0.02 rad at peak load, and further rotation post-peak), suggests connection eccentricity significantly affects the behaviour of the embedded plate and should be considered in design.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • standardization
  • embedded plate
  • cast-in anchor
  • headed stud
  • shear stud
  • concrete
  • steel
  • connection

• Graduation date

  Spring 2021

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Science

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-gyvw-aa48

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.