Modeling of Column Shear Hinges in Pushover Analysis and Experimental Validation

A column is a critical member in a reinforced concrete framed building. It transfers lateral shear during an earthquake, in the presence of gravity loads. Failure of short wall-type shear-critical columns in the soft and weak open ground story (OGS) of a building during an earthquake can trigger pancake-type collapse. To avoid these types of failures, the weak columns in the OGS can be strengthened locally, in addition to a global retrofit strategy applied to the entire structure. This research focuses on the seismic strengthening of such short columns using the concrete jacketing technique. The study presented in this paper demonstrates a methodology to model the shear behavior of short columns before and after jacketing. This pertains to the nonlinear static analysis of a building under lateral loads, such as a static pushover analysis. The development of shear hinge properties for as-built and jacketed short columns is presented in this paper. These were based on a proposed generalized truss analogy, which was validated based on the tests of column specimens conducted as part of this research. Pushover analyses of a building model without and with jacketed columns in the OGS were conducted. Selected results of the analyses are presented in this paper. The modeling of the shear hinge properties for the short columns in the OGS demonstrated the brittle behavior under lateral loads before jacketing and the improvement in ductility after jacketing. The proposed method can be used in professional practice for evaluating buildings with short columns strengthened by concrete jacketing. Since all the columns in a story cannot be jacketed due to economic and functional considerations, the effect of selective jacketing of the columns on the behavior of the building under lateral loads is illustrated.

An existing reinforced concrete framed building can be retrofitted to mitigate the damage expected during a future earthquake. The effect of retrofit on the structure should be justified preferably by a nonlinear method of analysis such as pushover analysis. The primary input in such an analysis is the nonlinear behavior of each structural member under increasing lateral loads, modeled as the hinge property. The presented study discusses the pushover analyses of a building, before and after strengthening its short wall-type columns in the open ground story by concrete jacketing. A method to develop the shear hinge properties of as-built and jacketed short columns is explained in this paper. The method is based on extending the truss analogy for modeling the shear deformation of a short frame member after the diagonal cracking of concrete in the web. The procedure does not need any special purpose program for calculation and can be implemented using a spreadsheet. Also, a parametric study on optimum strengthening is presented, showing the effect of jacketing selected columns, as all the columns need not be intervened, to reduce the cost as well as the disruption to the users.