• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.201-212
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• 2014

The plastic hinge region of RC pier ensures its nonlinear behavior during strong earthquake events. It is assumed that the piers secure sufficient strength and ductility in order to prevent the collapse of the bridge during strong earthquake. However, the presence of a lap-splice of longitudinal bars in the plastic hinge region may lead to the occurrence of early bond failure in the lap-splice zone and result in significant loss of the seismic performance. The current regulations for seismic performance evaluation limit the ultimate strain and displacement ductility considering the eventual presence of lap-splice, but do not consider the lap-splice length. In this study, seismic performance test and analysis are performed according to the cross-sectional size and the lap-splice length in the case of longitudinal bars with lap-splice located in the plastic hinge region of existing RC bridge columns with circular cross-section. The seismic behavioral characteristics of the piers are also analyzed. Based upon the results, this paper presents a more reasonable seismic performance evaluation method considering the lap-splice length and the cross-sectional size of the column.