• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.57-65
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• 2017

The fatigue fracture of studs is the main reason for failure of composite beams based on massive engineering practices. Hence, studying the laws of cracks initiation and propagation are of great directive significance. eXtended Finite Element Method (XFEM) is an effective method in solving moving discontinuous problems in recent years. This paper extends our recent work on the fatigue damage analysis of stud shear connectors in the steel and crumble rubber concrete (RRFC) composite beams based on XFEM. The process of crack initiation to failure of the stud is simulated and an effective calculation criteria for the fatigue life of the composite beams is put forward. After the reliability of the numerical analysis is verified based on tests results, the extensive parametric study is conducted concerning effects of different rubber contents, shear connection degrees and the stress amplitudes. Results show that with the increasing rubber contents and shear connection degrees, the fatigue lives of composite beams increase obviously. Furthermore, the relationship between the fatigue life of the stud at the edge of the shear span and the whole composite beams is studied. Finally, the S-N curves of the single stud and the whole composite beams are put forward based on XFEM.