Composite concrete filled steel tube columns are increasingly used for high-rise building structures, owing to their excellent structural performance such as superior load-bearing capacity, high ductility, good energy dissipation and fire behaviour which arises from the combination of the two different materials in the structure. Composite structures exploit the characteristics of steel and concrete; steel with its high tensile strength and ductility and concrete with its high compressive strength and stiffness. In general, concrete filled composite columns with circular hollow sections (CHS) have the advantage over columns with other section shapes due to the circular cross sections providing a uniform confinement to the concrete core.

This paper summarises the data from 1819 tests on concrete-filled steel tube columns and compares their failure load with the prediction of Eurocode 4. The full data is given on the website http://web.ukonline.co.uk/asccs2 . The comparison with Eurocode 4 is discussed and shows that Eurocode 4 can be used with confidence and generally gives good agreement with test results, the average Test/EC4 ratio for all tests being 1.11. The Eurocode 4 limitations on concrete strength could be safely extended to concrete with a cylinder strength of 75 N/mm2 for circular sections and 60 N/mm2 for rectangular sections.