The paper presents the results of experimental investigations performed by the authors on the casting position factor. It was proved that at the height of reinforced concrete elements there are different bond conditions. Moreover, the bond depends on concrete mechanical properties, element height as well as concrete mix composition and consistency. The experiments also showed the advisability of determining the casting position factor separately for bars from normal concrete and those from high–performance concrete (HPC). The analysis of investigation results has shown that “good” bond conditions are a relative concept and depend on, among other things, element height. The higher the element the better the concrete to lower bars bond. Consequently, elements of considerable height (higher than 600 mm) demonstrate a bigger difference between concrete to upper bars bond and concrete to lower bars bond.
The aim of the paper was to assess the bending strength of steel plate - concrete composite members, based on an experimental study performed by the authors together with theoretical and numerical analyses. The values of the mechanical parameters of the materials the beams were made from were adopted on the basis of the tests results. The proposed solutions have been verified by experiment. For this purpose the results of tests performed by the authors and other researchers have been used. The former ones are original, and the way of their presentation makes them applicable by other researchers. Following the results it can be stated that with respect to bending strengths from the experimental study the results obtained from the theoretical analysis are underestimated 6,6 % on average. The results based on the numerical analysis, on the other hand, are overestimated by - 7,5 % on average. The results of the theoretical and numerical analyses indicate that the interface slip between the steel plate and concrete part affect the bending strength of steel plate-concrete composite beams only slightly (about 2% on average).