11 © 2016 Conscientia Beam. All Rights Reserved. IMPACT OF SHEAR CONNECTOR SPACING IN COMPOSITE CONSTRUCTION INCORPORATING COLD-FORMED STEEL CHANNEL LIPPED SECTION Anis Saggaff 1 --- Mustapha Muhammad Lawan 2 --- Mahmood Md. Tahir 3 --- Jahangir Mirza 4 1 Civil Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Sriwijaya University, Indonesia 2,3,4 UTM Construction Research Centre, Institute for Smart Infrastructure and Innovative Construction, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Skudai, Johor Bahru, Malaysia ABSTRACT Composite construction with traditional Hot Rolled Steel (HRS) sections has been known to perform much better than with Cold-Formed Steel (CFS) sections for decades; as observed by extensive rules and requirements for their design as prescribed in current design codes. There is, however, limited technical information available about the use of composite systems that incorporates the use of light gauge steel sections, despite the potentials of the system in residential and light industrial constructions. However, the composite action of CFS with an in-situ concrete, especially Self-Compacting Concrete (SCC) using bolted shear connector has not yet established. Therefore, this study attempted to investigate the behaviour of bolted shear connector used with SCC and CFS to form a composite beam system at designated longitudinal spacing. Push-out and full- scale test specimens of longitudinal spacing of 250 mm and 300 mm with bolted shear connector of grade 8.8 installed with single nut and washer on the CFS flange and beneath it were fabricated, cast and tested till failure occurred. The experimental test results shows that the bolted shear connector possessed good ultimate strength and ultimate moment capacities with an increase in the longitudinal spacing of the bolted shear connector from 250 mm and to 300 mm respectively. It was therefore concluded that, longitudinal spacing between bolted shear connectors had significantly influenced the shear connector strength capacities. Keywords: Cold-formed steel, Composite construction, Composite beam, Bolted shear connector, Push-out test, Longitudinal spacing. Contribution/ Originality This study contributes in the existing literature by demonstrating the use of Cold-Formed Steel (CFS) section with bolted shear connector embedded in Self-Compacting Concrete (SCC). 1. INTRODUCTION Construction practices and philosophies in the present time have become more enormous in which players in the construction industries played an important role [1]. In construction, the main constituents’ materials are concrete and steel. Corrosion in steel could be resisted by using corrosion inhibitors [2]. Corrosion in the reinforcing steel could cause concrete to crack, leading to crushing of the whole concrete mass in the structure [3, 4]. Therefore, to prevent the cracking in concrete structures, self-healing agents are incorporated in the mixing of concrete prior to its application in the construction process [5]. But, in light-weight composite construction the Cold-Formed Steel (CFS) section used is prevented from corrosion by coating. CFS sections are lightweight materials that are produced by bending of a flat steel sheet at a room temperature [6] into a desired shape that can withstand more load than the flat sheet itself; and are suitable for building construction owing to their high Review of Industrial Engineering Letters 2016 Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 11-18 ISSN(e): 2408-9427 ISSN(p): 2409-2169 DOI: 10.18488/journal.71/2016.3.1/71.1.11.18 © 2016 Conscientia Beam. All Rights Reserved.