Inelastic behaviour of exterior wide beam-column connections with U-shaped precast shell beam stressed by post-tensioning

The post-tensioned precast concrete system (PPS) consists of U-shaped precast wide beams and a concrete column. The continuity of the beam-column joint is provided with the topping concrete on the precast concrete shell beam and post-tensioning. The purpose of the current paper is to evaluate the response of a PPS exterior beam-column joint subjected to cyclic lateral loading. To this end, the experimental investigation was performed with three half-scale specimens of the exterior connection. The design parameters are the beam-width-to-column-width ratio and the amount of beam reinforcement placed inside the column core. The test results showed that specimen cracks were distributed well and plastic hinges spread towards midspan without any significant degradation of strength and ductility. Furthermore, the specimens sufficiently resist up to a limiting drift ratio of 0.035 in accordance with the the provisions given by the American Concrete Institute in their 'Acceptance criteria for moment frames based on structural testing'.