Seismic Damage Assessment of Reinforced Concrete Members

Keywords: Reinforced Concrete Structures, Damage Indices, Structural Analysis, and Seismic Reliability Analysis.

Abstract: This report starts with a fundamental discussion of damage, which reinforced concrete members sustain under large inelastic cyclic loads similar to those experienced during a severe earthquake. A large number of damage indices, which have been proposed in the literature, are discussed and critically evaluated under the criterion of usefulness for structural analysis and seismic risk assessment. A new damage index is presented, which the authors believe is a rational measure of the physical response characteristics of reinforced concrete members and better suited for nonlinear structural analysis than those that have been proposed previously. Unfortunately, experimental data, on which the calibration of the new model depends, are scarce, therefore it is recommended that systematic low-cycle fatigue tests be undertaken to strengthen the theoretical basis for the model.