Seismic Design of New Rc Beams I-Design for Limited Ductile Plastic Hinge

This sub-project is proposed in term of three years. The main goal of the first year is to investigate the design method for the plastic hinge relocation of New RC beams. The second year topic will focus on the buckling behavior of the high strength SD685 reinforcing steel bars. Then the third year topic will discuss the problem of low-cycle fatigue of the high strength steel bars for New RC beams.In the project for the first year, experimental study will be performed on the cantilever RC beams subjected to simulated seismic loading. Six rectangular RC beams are tested. The purpose of the study is to find a feasible design method on how to relocate the plastic hinge zone to a distance away from the column face, which is different from the traditional plastic hinge zone occurred at the column face. The special design for the plastic hinge zone is so called as the design for the limited ductile plastic hinge zone (LDPH). This is because the LDPH could avoid the damage from occurring at the column faces and beam column joints. Specially for the New RC structures, the damage at the column face is more severe than the traditional RC structures..