Seismic behavior and shear strength of tubed RC short columns

Reinforced concrete (RC) short columns are vulnerable to brittle shear failure during an earthquake. The objective of this research is to evaluate the performance enhancement of RC short columns tubed with circular or square tubes. Eight short columns were tested under combined constant axial load and cyclic lateral load. The tested specimens included three circular tubed RC (CTRC) columns and three square tubed RC (STRC) columns. Two common RC short columns including one circular RC column and one square RC column were also tested as control specimens. The test results indicated that common RC short columns suffered brittle shear failure with little ductility, while the ductility of tubed RC short columns was excellent due to the effective confinement of the outer thin tube to the core concrete. The lateral load strength of CTRC short columns increases with the increasing of axial load ratio, while the axial load ratio has little effect on the plastic deformation capacity of CTRC short columns. The shear strength increases with increasing of axial load ratio, while the plastic deformation capacity decreases with increasing of axial load ratio for STRC short columns. A circular tube prevents the core concrete from shear failure more effectively than a square tube for the tubed RC short columns. A modified ACI design method is adopted to calculate the nominal shear strength of STRC columns as well as CTRC columns based on the test and analysis results.