Equivalent Viscous Damping Ratio Model for Flexure Critical Reinforced Concrete Columns

In order to determine the energy dissipation capacity of flexure critical reinforced concrete (RC) columns reasonably, an expression for describing the hysteretic behavior including loading and unloading characteristics of flexure critical RC columns is presented, and then, a new equivalent viscous damping (EVD) ratio model including its simplified format, which is interpreted as a function of a displacement ductility factor and a ratio of secant stiffness to yield stiffness of columns, is developed based on the proposed hysteretic loop expression and experimental data from the PEER column database. To illustrate the application of the proposed equivalent damping ratio model, a case study of pushover analysis on a flexure critical RC bridge with a single-column pier is provided. The analytical results are also compared with the results obtained by other models, which indicate that the proposed model is more general and rational in predicting energy dissipation capacity of flexure critical RC structures subjected to earthquake excitations.

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