In-plane creep buckling of concrete-filled steel tubular arches

The creep-induced deformation of the arch rib of concrete-filled steel tubular (CFST) arches under a sustained load can increase the bending moment, which may lead to earlier stability failure called creep buckling. To investigate the influences of concrete creep on the buckling strength of arches, a theoretical analysis for the creep buckling of CFST circular arches under distributed radial load is performed. The simplified Arutyunyan-Maslov (AM) creep law is used to model the creep behavior of concrete core, and the creep integral operator is introduced. The analytical solutions of the time-dependent buckling strength under the sustained load are achieved and compared with the existing formula based on the age-adjusted effective modulus method (AEMM). Then the solutions are used to determine the influences of the steel ratio and the first loading age on the creep buckling of CFST arches. The results show that the analytical solutions are of good accuracy and applicability. For CFST arches, the steel ratio and the first loading age have significant influences on creep buckling. An approximate log-linear relationship between the decreased degrees of the creep buckling strength and the first loading age is found. For the commonly used parameters, the maximum loss of the buckling strength induced by concrete creep is close to 40%.