ABSTRACT
A comparative study on the bearing capacity of the concrete filled steel tube (CFST) columns under axial compression is carried out using FEM and DEM. Three groups of specimens are simulated in this research using the commercial software ANSYS and PFC3D respectively. The overall results demonstrate that both the FEM and DEM are capable to reproduce the mechanical behavior of CFSTs qualitatively and quantitatively. The results of the ultimate bearing capacities show that the DEM simulation (-8.25% to -15.58%) has a larger deviation in comparison with FEM (-1.69% to 2.64%), which illustrates that the micro-parameters in DEM should still be calibrated and modified in order to achieve better results. Furthermore, by comparing the two methods with each other, it is noted that the discrete element analysis is capable but not very efficient to investigate large objects with lots of elements/particles.
