Mechanical behaviour of precast prestressed reinforced concrete beam–column joints in elevated station platforms subjected to vertical cyclic loading

Abstract

Abstract Precast-reinforced concrete (RC) structures in urban rail transit projects can provide many advantages over their cast-in-place counterparts. However, lessons learned from past earthquakes show that beam-column joints may be a critical point of these structures and can overestimate the mechanical performance under vertical seismic loadings if not properly understood. This paper presents unbonded and bonded prestressed precast RC beam-column joints for elevated station platforms. Prestressed steel strands are used to provide joints with self-centring capacity. The performance of the proposed joints under vertical cyclic loadings is experimentally investigated and compared to that of monolithic joints in this study. The obtained results demonstrate the good properties of the proposed precast joints in terms of bearing capacity, energy dissipation capacity and ductility control. A comparison with a conventional monolithic beam-column joint indicates the better performance against earthquakes of the proposed precast prestressed joints, and the precast joint with symmetric prestressed steel strands in the top and bottom of the beam exhibits better flexural stiffness and energy dissipation capacity.