Experimental Investigations on Seismic Retrofitting of Reinforced Concrete Beam-Column Joints

摘要

Beam-column joints are recognized as the critical and vulnerable zone of a Reinforced Concrete (RC)moment resisting structure subjected to seismic loads. During an earthquake, the global response ofthe structure is mainly governed by the behaviour of the joints. If the joints behave in a ductilemanner, the global behaviour generally will be ductile, whereas if the joints behave in a brittlefashion then the structure will display a brittle behaviour. The joints of old and non-seismicallydetailed structures are more vulnerable and behave poorly under the earthquakes compared to thejoints of new and seismically detailed structures. Therefore, more often than not, the joints of suchold structures require retrofitting in order to deliver better performance during earthquakes. Variousresearchers have proposed different methods to retrofit the beam-column joints of existing RCstructures. This paper reports a few experimental investigations carried out for seismic retrofitting ofRC beam-column joints using different techniques. The concepts behind each of them and theirpractical usefulness have been brought out.