Abstract
The plastic hinge length is one of the important factors to assess the ductility capacity of reinforced concrete columns under seismic loading. It has been suggested that the plastic hinge length is affected by column size, column hight, longitudinal bar diameter, hoop spasing, etc, however, there are few researches on the plastic hinge length. This paper presents the analytical studies on buckling of longitudinal reinforcement in columns with use of the FEM analyses and compares the theoretical buckling length with that obtained from the column loading tests. Furthermore, the simplified procedure for assessing the plastic hinge length of reinforced concrete columns is proposed based on the analytical studies on the buckling of longitudinal reinforcement with taking account of the inelastic behavior.
