Shear strength model of reinforced-concrete exterior joint under cyclic loading

A capacity model for shear strength of reinforced-concrete exterior beam–column joints subjected to quasi-static cyclic loading is established. In this model, only a fraction of this force is asserted to be transferred into the joint core, the remainder is assumed to be transferred into the adjacent column. A biaxial failure criterion of concrete is adopted to predict shear failure of the joint core caused by a combination of principal compression and tension stresses. The contribution of the shear reinforcement is accounted for by improving the tensile strength of the concrete. In addition, the special features of the proposed model include: first, the asynchronicity of concrete and shear reinforcement in tensile strength is taken into account and, second, the role of column axial stress is accounted for by its influence on both the magnitude and direction of principal tensile and compressive stresses at the joint core. The validity of the proposed model is evaluated by comparing the predicted shear strengths with 142 test results collected from the literature and with five other analytical models. This evaluation showed that the proposed model can predict shear strength with better reliability.