• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.11-21
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• 2002

The evaluation of displacement ductility is performed by direct method through tracking the inelastic hysteretic behavior of RC bridge columns subject to cyclic loading using a flexibility-based fiber element mode. To reasonably track the inelastic behavior until the RC bridge column reaches its ultimate state, the average stress-average strain relations and joint elements, which agree well with experiments, are modified and applied considering the tension stiffening behavior and discontinuous displacement between the column and its base. In addition the evaluation of displacement ductility is performed by a direct method easily applicable to numerical analysis. Locations for the integration points, values for the post-crushing concrete strength and low-cycle fatigue failure of longitudinal reinforcement that affect the calculation of yielding and ultimate displacements are proposed for the application to flexibility-based fiber element model. Since less than 10% of error occurs during the displacement ductility analysis, the yielding and ultimate displacements evaluated by the applied analysis method and model appear to be valid.