| The behavior of embedded steel plates in tilt-up construction has been rarely studied and is not well understood. This research attempts to establish a reliable engineering design guide for embedded steel plates in tilt-up walls. Steel plates are the most important and widely-used connections in tilt-up; understanding the structural behavior of embedded steel plates in tilt-up construction due to eccentric loading is critical to the design of such components. The structural behavior of various plate configurations under the same concentrated loading is investigated.;Six concrete panel specimens, each with an embedded steel plate in the center, were designed, cast and tested until failure using the Universal Panel Tester at the University of Houston. The finite-element computer program, ABAQUS, was used to develop a computer model to simulate each panel test specimen. When the results of a computer program were compared with the actual experimental results, they were shown to be in agreement.;The CCD example in the ACI documents has one loading case identical to the outcome in this research. The ACI Code equations were found to be in very limited practice with regard to the design of embedded steel plates in actual loading conditions and will result in overdesign. Since finite-element analysis results were proven in this study to be in agreement with the experimental results, a design table or a set of design equations is proposed to be developed for tilt-up design in the near future.;This study finds that across-the-board code-equation standardization is unrealistic. Several ideas are suggested for future design-standardization studies. |
