• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.594-605
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• 2003

Pinching is an important property of reinforced concrete member which characterizes its cyclic behavior. In the present study, numerical studies were performed to investigate the characteristics of pinching behavior and the energy dissipation capacity of flexure-dominated reinforced concrete members. By investigating existing experiments and numerical results, it was found that flexural pinching which has no relation with shear action appears in RC members subject to axial compression force. However, members with specific arrangement and amount of re-bars, have the same energy dissipation capacity regardless of the magnitude of the axial force applied even though the shape of the cyclic curve varies due to the effect of the axial force. This indicates that concrete as a brittle material does not significantly contribute to the energy dissipation capacity though its effect on the behavior increases as the axial force increases, and that energy dissipation occurs primarily by re-bars. Therefore, the energy dissipation capacity of flexure-dominated member can be calculated by the analysis on the cross-section subject to pure bending, regardless of the actual compressive force applied. Based on the findings, a practical method and the related design equations for estimating energy dissipation capacity and damping modification factor was developed, and their validity was verified by the comparisons with existing experiments. The proposed method can be conveniently used in design practice because it accurately estimates energy dissipation capacity with general design parameters.