A numerical modeling of RC beam-column joints compared to experimental results

Beam-column joints are commonly considered critic regions for RC frames subjected to earthquake. That is why assessing the beam-column joint capacity is an important topic, especially for structures constructed before the modern seismic design codes, or for buildings in post-seismic situations. Among the in-situ structural assessment methods, the vibrational testing is currently mentioned. The authors have developed an analytical method to assess the damage evolution of a structure in function of its dynamic characteristics. The method consists of two main steps and the first one necessitates a robust model which can reproduce the static behavior of the studied structure. For this purpose, the authors try and assess the relevancy of existing numerical models to choose the most relevant for the second step. This paper presents an assessment of the CDP (Concrete Damage Plasticity) model implemented in the Abaqus software. First, an experimental study on a RC beam-column frames is presented. Unloading-reloading cycles were performed during the tests and the displacement fields were recorded by using the image correlation technique. The experimental data are used to assess the relevancy of the CDP model, but these data can be useful also for the further studies to verify and improve the accuracy of the numerical or analytical models.