Investigation of shear strength models for exterior RC beam-column joint

Various models have been proposed by several researchers for predicting the exterior RC beam-column joint shear strength. Most of these models were calibrated and verified with some limited experimental database. From the models it has been identified that the joint shear strength majorly depends on ten governing parameters. In the present paper, detailed investigation of twelve analytical models for predicting shear strength of exterior beam-column joint has been carried out. The study shows the effect of each governing parameter on joint shear strength predicted by various models. It has been observed that the consensus on effect of few of the governing parameters amongst the considered analytical models has not been attained. Moreover, the predicted joint strength by different models varies significantly. Further, the prediction of joint shear strength by these analytical models has also been compared with a set of 200 experimental results from the literature. It has been observed that none of the twelve models are capable of predicting joint shear strength with sufficient accuracy for the complete range of experimental results. The research community has to reconsider the effect of each parameters based on larger set of test results and new improved analytical models should be proposed.