Experimental study on seismic performance of mega steel-reinforced concrete columns subjected to cyclic loads

In recent years, mega steel-reinforced concrete (SRC) columns have been applied in super tall buildings. The previous research on SRC columns mainly focuses on the components with simple arrangement of shaped steel, such as H-shaped steel and cross-shaped steel, with little attention paid to mega SRC columns, which always have complicated encased steel and large steel ratio. The cyclic loading tests were carried out on scaled mega SRC column models with different cross-section type of encased steel and steel ratio. The principal damage states were investigated throughout the entire testing process. Based on the test results, the effects of steel ratio and the cross-section type of encased steel on the damage characteristics, hysteretic behavior, ductility, secant stiffness degradation, energy dissipation capacity and maximum crack width were analyzed. The test results indicate that the steel ratio has significant effect on the seismic performance of mega SRC columns while the effect of cross-section type of encased steel is not significant. Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.