Recent Papers

Beam-Column joints are crucial structural elements in a seismic force resisting system. Failure of these elements may lead to total collapse of a structure. Recent earthquakes have demonstrated that structural systems designed based on current codes of practice are vulnerable to severe damages, mostly due to undesirable performance of joints. In general, design codes do not consider the effects of joint characteristics on the behavior of the structure and treat joints as members which remain elastic during an earthquake. To thoroughly understand the effects of different design parameters on the behavior of beam-column connections in reinforced concrete (RC) structures and consequently on the overall performance of seismic force resisting system, a wide range of experiments must be carried out. But prior to a successful setup and conducting any experiments, a theoretical study and numerical simulation is essential. Therefore, it is necessary to study the behavior of RC beam-column joints subjected to seismic forces using a F.E. model for RC beam-column connections in the simulation environment provided by ANSYS, and then investigate the performance of beam-column joint. In the first part of this research, a verification study using ANSYS 21 for 9 full-scale reinforced concrete with the presence additional reinforcement at the joint core and debonding of reinforcement in some joints. The verification study aims to compare the experimental results with numerical results. It can be concluded that the finite element analysis was performed numerically, and the predicted seismic performance was in very good agreement with the experimental results. The second part of this research is the numerical modeling of twenty four beam column joint specimens were modeled using the ANSYS 21 program. The modeling was similar for all beam column joints specimens. Several wide beam specimens were simulated in this research to reveal the stress transfer paths in wide beam-column joints. Models with greater (significantly more than 1.0) shear capacity ratios, VR, and moment capacity ratios, MR, have the capabilities to resist forces with magnitudes 70% up to 100% more than code requirements. More specimens should be considered to improve the understanding of load paths of wide beam-column connections with various geometries and design parameters, such as beam width and depth, column height, beam-to-column eccentricity.

Copyright © 2022 Ahmed Mohamed Ismail. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License.