Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1

Statement of Problem

Most recently, a catastrophic magnitude of 7.0 ML earthquake has swept over and
destroyed Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital on Tuesday, 12 January 2010. An estimated three
million people have been affected, the Haitian Government has reported that 230,000
people had been identified as dead, an estimated 300,000 injured, and 1,000,000 homeless.
They also estimated that 250,000 residences and 30,000 commercial buildings had
collapsed or were severely damaged, that were blamed as a main reason kills people during
Earthquake. This disaster once more tells us about the danger of sub-standard buildings
designed and constructed without seismic-resisted consideration.
South East Asia had been considered to be a low to moderate seismicity region so far, the
Reinforced Concrete (RC) structures constructed in this area have been normally designed
for gravity and wind load; seismic loading has not been considered to take into account of
these structures. However, seismic hazard level of some countries in this zone is reportedly
moderate and moderated high-risk, according to some recent studies. For example, Huyen
(2001) showed that the northwest part of Vietnam is seismically active, in which several
moderated earthquake have occurred in the twentieth- century; in addition, Warnitchai and
Lisatono (1996) reported that the northern and western parts of Thailand are in moderate
and moderately high-risk zone. Therefore, it is no doubt, that a strong earthquake could
take place in South East Asian countries, and that a Haitis disaster will happen again in
this region if there is no effective method to strengthen such sub-standard RC buildings.
The critical non-seismic reinforcement details of sub-standard structures which violate
modern seismic design theory were identified. These include short lap-splices of column
reinforcement located immediately above floor levels, widely spaced column ties,
inadequate hoop reinforcement in potential plastic hinge regions. Lapsplice length
designed base on sub-standards was shorter than required length that follow current
seismic design standards, therefore short lapsplice reduce the seismic capacity of structure.
Several methods were used to strengthening lapsplice capacity, such as jacketing lapsplice
length by steel plate, composite materials, or steel fiber concrete. Fiber reinforced polymer
(FRP) composites have found increasingly wide applications in civil engineering due to
their high strength-to-weight ratio and high corrosion resistance. One important application
of FRP-composites is as a confining material for concrete in the retrofit of existing
reinforced concrete (RC) columns. As a result of FRP confinement, the compressive
strength and the ultimate strain of concrete can be greatly enhanced, the bond stress
between reinforced bar and concrete is also increased.
The transfer of forces across the interface between steel and concrete through bond plays a
major role in controlling the behavior of reinforced concrete members. Cracking and crack
widths, deflections, structural strength, and energy absorption and dissipation capacities
under seismic loading are all related directly or indirectly to bond. It is necessary to
discover the bond stress distribution along reinforcing bar to calculate the bond strengths
such as starter bar strength and embed bar strength. Some bond stress models were
proposed to evaluate the bond strength of pre-yielding reinforcing bar. However, there is
scarce study on bond stress along post-yielding reinforcing bar and when structural
member was confined by FRP.
1

Two main methodologies to conduct a research in behavior of RC structure are analytical

and experimental approaches. Several analytical methods can be used to evaluate the
seismic capacity of a given structure are: Nonlinear Static Procedure (LSP), Linear
Dynamic Procedure (LDP), Nonlinear Static Procedure (NSP) or Pushover Analysis,
Nonlinear Dynamic Procedure (NDP). The advantages of analytical approach are reduction
of expense and time consuming, however, without any experimental verification, analytical
results could not be completely reliable. Some analytical models were built to assess the
effect of a short lapsplice on seismic resistance of column, also to assess the effective
improvement lapsplice capacity of some strengthening methods.
Ruaumoko2D is a well known platform for modeling reinforced concrete structure,
especially with capacity of degradation simulation and a huge of hysteresis embedded in
Ruaumoko2D, researchers can apply these characteristics into their models. Ruaumoko2D
has been used for modeling reinforced concrete column for simulating behavior, and it is
found that the comparison between analytical model and experimental result were close.
This analysis program provides diverse structural members, so that researchers can
assemble their different structures.
Sub-standard reinforced concrete structure is popularly used in many buildings in South
East Asian countries, such as academic buildings, apartment buildings, and official
buildings. Short lap splice is considered to be one of the most critical parts in this type of
structure subjected to earthquake since it causes the non-ductile RC structural behavior.
Using FRP to wrap the lap splice zone is one of the current effective methods to strengthen
this weakness. However, the effectiveness of FRP confinement on bond stress along lap
splice is not fully understood, especially in a post-yield range, which obstructs applying
FRP to retrofit sub-standard column practically because the required amount of FRP
should be used per a given column is still a question. In this study, the author aims to
figure out the bond stress distribution along starter bar by applying either analytical
method or experimental approach.

1.2

Objectives

The thesis aims to investigate a seismic performance of sub-standard RC structural

members that are not designed for earthquakes. In other words, these members are
primarily designed for gravity and or wind load, thus, they lack ductile reinforcement
details especially the lap splice length is short and weakly confined by a wide arrangement
of stirrup. The objectives of this thesis is listed as follows

1.3

Investigate the distribution of bond stress along lap splice bar in either pre-yielding
or post-yielding range.

Assess the effectiveness of FRP confinement on strengthening sub-standard RC

structure members and a short lap splice zone in sub-standard RC columns.

Develop an analytical model to simulate a RC column with short lap splice

confined by FRP wrapping.

Conduct an experiment to investigate FRP confinements effectiveness on

strengthening a short lapsplice, as well as to verify a proposed model.
Scopes and limitations

The author focuses on sub-standard reinforced concrete structural members that were built
according to the old standard (pre-1970). These structural members were normally
designed to maintain its gravity load and a wind load; however, they were not considered a
quakes load.
This study pays attention on one of deficiencies of sub-standard structure: a short lap
splice. Lap splice in a sub-standard RC structure was relatively short, that cause members
ductility losing and brittle failure while subjects to earthquake.
The analytical model developed in this study was two dimensions (2D) model; quakes
were applied to structures on model plane. Ruaumoko2D was used for simulation and
analyzing.
The Author proposed a model of bond stress distribution consists of three uniform zone
along starter bar. The proposed model was developed base on bi-uniform bond stress
model and some existing experimental results.
An experiment was conducted to verify the proposed model. The RC columns were tested
under beams testing condition, in which a column was rotated into horizontal plane; a
basement was replaced by a symmetrically-opposite similar column but without lap splice.
A load applied on the test is static load, increased step by step from zero to collapsed
members load. The retrofitting material was Fiber Reinforced Polymer. FRP sheets were
wrapped one by one around and cover all lap splice zone due to section perimeter. FRP
sheets were stick to column surface and to each other by chemical resin.
Finally, the author presents a computing procedure that can be used by practicing engineer
to design a required number of FRP layers should be used for a given sub-standard column
in order to reach desirable lap splice strength.