Shear Strength of Exterior Wide Beam-Column Joints with Different Beam Reinforcement Ratios

Full-scale exterior reinforced concrete wide beam-column joints with beam reinforcement ratios of 0.84%, 1.07% and 1.28% were tested under reversed cyclic loading. Beam flexural failure was observed in the specimen with reinforcement ratio of 0.84%, while joint shear failure after beam yielding was detected in other two specimens. Detailed analysis was conducted to evaluate the seismic performance of specimens including hysteretic behavior, cracking patterns, joint shear distortion, strain of the reinforcement and energy dissipation capacity. Accuracies of the joint shear demand and capacity predicted by four seismic codes of practice are assessed by joint shear forces from the experimental results.