Seismic performance of circular RC bridge columns with flexure-torsion interaction

Reinforced concrete (RC) bridge columns for skewed, curved bridges and other kinds of irregular bridges can be subjected to combined loadings with axial load, shear force, flexure and torsion under multi-dimensional earthquake excitations. Combined loadings including torsion probably affect the seismic performance of these bridge columns. The experimental investigation on the seismic performance of circular RC bridge columns under combined cyclic bending and torsional loading is conducted in this paper. Twelve circular RC bridge column specimens are tested under various loading conditions: cyclic bending, cyclic torsion, and combined cyclic torsion and cyclic bending. Several combinations of cyclic bending and cyclic torsion are applied to evaluate the interaction between torsion and flexural capacity of bridge columns. The experimental results showed that the flexural capacity decreases and the damage tends to occur upward outside the flexural plastic hinge region as the level of applied cyclic torsion increases, and the torsional capacity decreases as the level of applied cyclic bending increases. The failure mode and deformation characteristics of RC bridge columns will be changed due to the effect of combined flexural and torsional loadings. The locking and unlocking effect of the spiral reinforcement on torsional and flexural envelopes of columns under pure torsion and combined cyclic bending and torsion is found. The influence of aspect ratio, longitudinal reinforcement ratio and type of spiral reinforcement on the seismic performance of columns under combined action with the same rotation-drift ratio is also discussed. An empirical flexural and torsional hysteretic model for circular RC columns with single spiral stirrup under combined cyclic bending and torsion is proposed based on the experimental results.