Using damage indices to describe the influence of loading history on reinforced concrete structures

Abstract

This paper evaluates the use of damage indices to predict the behaviour of reinforced concrete beams under different loading histories. Twelve nominally identical beams were tested with twelve different loading histories, including conventional procedures employed in the United States, Japan and New Zealand, and artificially generated histories derived from recorded earthquake ground motions.

The collected data was compared to five different damage indices to evaluate their suitability as a method of predicting the behaviour of concrete structures when subjected to earthquake loading. It was found that damage indices can be effective performance descriptors.