Experimental Study of Reinforced Concrete Beam-Column Joint Using Pre-tensioned Stiffened Steel Angles

Retrofit is one of the effective and sustainable ways to upgrade seismically deficient structures. The beam-column joint is an important structural member that should be prevented from damaging during a seismic event. An innovative retrofit technique named pre-tensioned stiffened steel angles had been proposed to retrofit the joint shear deficient beam-column joints which aimed to achieve the “strong column-weak beam” design philosophy. Two half-scale exterior joints without joint transverse reinforcement had been constructed and tested under cyclic load. The results showed that this proposed technique successfully eliminated the joint shear failure and resulted in the beam flexural failure as well as enhanced its seismic properties. Hence, this proposed retrofit technique is effective to retrofit the seismically deficient beam-column joints.