Shear connectors are designed in steel-concrete composite construction to transmit the longitudinal shear, to prevent separation of steel and concrete slabs, and also to increase the structural efficiency of the whole system. In this study, the performances of different types of shear connectors in steel-concrete composite specimens are evaluated by conducting push-out tests under monotonic loading conditions. An ISMB 200 @ 25.4 kg/m universal steel beam measuring 400 mm and a reinforced cement concrete slab measuring 300 mm with a breadth of 200 mm and a thickness of 200 mm reinforced with 8 mm diameter steel rods are used for the experimental study. The results reveal that the load-slip relationships for various types of shear connectors and failure mechanisms are obtained to identify those shear connectors which are more relevant to the steel – concrete composite members.

The paper presents selected issues related to the load carrying capacity of joints between concretes cast at different times. The most important factors affecting the shear resistance, such as: surface roughness (profile), shear reinforcement ratio, concrete strength as well as the aggregate composition are discussed, including results of previous experimental studies conducted on push-off specimens and composite reinforced concrete beams. The differences in behaviour and shear resistance of contacts between ordinary concretes, lightweight aggregate concretes and recycled aggregate concretes are presented. Principles of interface design in the light of codes of practise: AASHTO-LRFD, ACI 318-19, EN 1992-1-1 and prEN 1992-1-1 were described. The theoretical predictions were compared with 184 results of experimental tests on push-off specimens. It has been found that most of the procedures allow for a safe estimation of the load carrying capacity of interfaces – with and without shear reinforcement. However, the obtained results were mostly conservative (depending on the considered design procedure, ratio of the experimental to theoretical load carrying capacity lies in range 1.51÷2.68). This may indicate that the description of shear transfer mechanism between concretes cast at different times is still imperfect and need to be improved.