Seismic performance of steel reinforced ultra high-strength concrete composite frame joints

To investigate the seismic performance of a composite frame comprised of steel reinforced ultra high-strength concrete （SRUHSC） columns and steel reinforced concrete （SRC） beams, six interior frame joint specimens were designed and tested under low cyclically lateral load. The effects of the axial load ratio and volumetric stirrup ratio were studied on the characteristics of the frame joint performance including crack pattern, failure mode, ductility, energy dissipation capacity, strength degradation and rigidity degradation. It was found that all joint specimens behaved in a ductile manner with flexural-shear failure in the joint core region while plastic hinges appeared at the beam ends. The ductility and energy absorption capacity of joints increased as the axial load ratio decreased and the volumetric stirIup ratio increased. The displacement ductility coefficient and equivalent damping coefficient of the joints fell between the corresponding coefficients of the steel reinforced concrete （SRC） frame joint and RC frame joint. The axial load ratio and volumetric stirrup ratio have less influence on the strength degradation and more influence on the stiffness degradation. The stiffness of the joint degrades more significantly for a low volumetric stirrup ratio and high axial load ratio. The characteristics obtained from the SRUHSC composite frame joint specimens with better seismic performance may be a useful reference in future engineering applications.

Nonlinear fi nite element analysis of high-strength concrete columns and experimental verification

This paper describes a nonlinear finite element （FE） analysis of high strength concrete （HSC） columns, and verifies the results through laboratory experiments. First, a cyclically lateral loading test on nine cantilever column specimens of HSC is described and a numerical simulation is presented to verify the adopted FE models. Next, based on the FE model for specimen No.6, numerical simulations for 70 cases, in which different concrete strengths, stirrup ratios and axial load ratios are considered, are presented to explore the effect of these parameters on the behavior of the HSC columns, and to check the rationality of requirements for these columns specified in the China Code for Seismic Design of Buildings （GB 50011- 2001）. In addition, three cases with different stirrup strengths are analyzed to investigate their effect on the behavior of HSC columns. Finally, based on the numerical results some conclusions are presented.