Proposal of standard testing guidelines for seismic performance verification of bridge columns

This paper presents key issues to standardize experimental verification protocol for quasi-static cyclic loading tests of the flexure failure type reinforced concrete (RC) bridge columns. The size effect on the inelastic behavior of RC columns would not be significant as long as paying careful attention to the scaling factor by the comparison of the experimental test results between full-scale and scaled specimens and between two same scaled specimens excluding the diameter size of longitudinal bars. Moreover, the rational cyclic loading pattern is proposed based on the nonlinear time-history response analyses for RC columns that the cyclic response numbers decreased gradually by increasing response displacement.