The Earthquake Engineering Online Archive

Behavior of reinforced concrete deep beam-column subassemblages under cyclic loads

Kustu, Onder; Bouwkamp, Jack G.

UCB/EERC-73/08, Earthquake Engineering Research Center, University of California, Berkeley, 1973, 240 pages (530/K872/1973)

The results of an experimental program to study the behavior and collapse mechanism of reinforced concrete deep beam-column frames and to evaluate present U.S. code provisions, both with respect to design loads and design details, are presented. The behavior and failure modes of half-scale, two-story, beam-column subassemblages under cyclic-induced lateral displacements and constant axial column loads are investigated. The brittle failure due to an inadequate shear capacity of the column sections is noted. Recommendations to increase the lateral load resistance are presented. An analytical model to predict cyclic force-deflection behavior of beam-column subassemblages is developed. Two analytical hysteresis models associated with flexural and shear deformations of the members are described. The total behavior is obtained by superposition of flexural and shear components. "Pinching" of the hysteresis loops observed in the experiments and associated with the shear deformations is analytically reproduced. Analytical predictions are compared with the experimental results. Agreement in general proved to be satisfactory. Necessity to represent stiffness deterioration due to large number of load reversals (cyclic deterioration) in the analytical models is noted.

Available online: http://nisee.berkeley.edu/documents/EERC/EERC-73-08.pdf (16 MB)