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MEMORANDUM 24 January 2014 Readers of the American Concrete Institute Materials Journal Carson Baker Self-Consolidating Rubberized Concrete Beam-Column Joints INTRODUCTION

Utilization of rubberized concrete has been shown to enhance several characteristic properties of beamcolumn joints. Beam-column joints are structural concrete connections which transfer beam service loads to columns. These sections are essential to the structural integrity of a building, because failure in a fracture-critical beam-column connection may result in the collapse of an entire floor. These connections must be designed to have adequate strength and stiffness to withstand the loads given them. However the stiffness of beam-column connections leads to failure modes which are often brittle rather than ductile in nature, leading to sudden and severe failures. Joint designs ought to have ductile behavior under loading, such that structural brittle failure is prevented. Furthermore, the effects of fatigue stress due to cyclical load patterns leading to the reduction of stiffness and strength capacity should be minimized. These considerations are especially important in seismic design, where repeated seismic vibrations may induce buckling in any direction. Connections must then be designed to disperse seismic energy into supporting members. This is also best achieved through the use of sufficiently ductile beam-column connections. The use of rubberized concrete addresses these concerns, and has positive implications regarding public safety, sustainability, and efficient design. HISTORY OF RUBBERIZED CONCRETE The advent of self-consolidating concrete (SCC), which has the unusual property of flowing under its own weight, reduced problems with surface scaling and allowed for easier finishing work. One proposal for enhancing the structural properties of SCC is to replace the mineral aggregates in SCC with waste materials, such as rice husk ash, marble dust, recycled aggregates, silica dust, rubber, or glass aggregates. This would theoretically allow for the production of more sustainable concretes due to their superior environmental friendliness and lower

impact on energy use, without compromising on their structural performance [1]. While studies have been carried out on selfconsolidating rubberized concrete (SCRC) [1]-[4], these have primarily been limited to small-scale specimens such as ASTM standard cylinders and cubes used in laboratory testing apparatuses. One of the primary issues with using SCRC is the reduction in strength that follows as a result of using rubber instead of a mineral based aggregate. However studies by the Transportation Research Board [2] indicate that these effects can be mitigated through the pretreatment of shredded rubber with admixtures such as polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), though this has not yet been tested in practice. STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS An experimental test apparatus was designed and fabricated at the Structural Engineering Laboratory of NIT Calicut, India [1] using a loading frame of 300kN (67.44 kip) capacity such that monotonic, repeated, and reverse cyclic loads could be applied to a beam-column joint. The specimens were cast at half scale and allowed to cure for 28 days. For each loading criteria, loads were applied continuously at increments of 1KN (.225 kip) until failure occurred. The results of analysis indicate that the addition of shredded rubber correlates to improvement in beamcolumn joint behavior under cyclic loads in regards to energy ductility, plastic absorption capacity, and cracking. While SCRC specimens exhibited a lower compressive and splitting-tensile strength [3], the addition of steel fibers resulted in increased strength capacity. Steel Fiber Reinforced Self-Consolidating Reinforced Concrete (SFRSCRC), when put through similar tests, outperformed both SCC and SCRC. Both SCRC and SFRSCRC beam-column joint specimens show superior ultimate deflection under reverse cyclic loadings due to the elastic nature that rubber exhibits when subjected to stress reversals [1]. The cracks observed in SCRC and SFRSCRC specimens were narrow hairline cracks and first

crack loads were measured higher than those in SCC specimens. Furthermore the cumulative absorbed plastic energy for the SCRC and SFRSCRC specimens is enhanced considerably in comparison to SCC specimens [3]. The load-deflection curves of the beam-column joint specimens under monotonic loading are shown in Figure 1 [1].

of ductile failure thereby allowing for the evacuation of a building in a seismic event. Sustainability The implications for sustainability and sustainable development are receiving greater attention in recent years by the construction trade. As concrete is the most widely used construction material, developments in sustainable technologies for concrete construction often lead to a significant conservation of resources and reduction of waste across the industry. Millions of waste rubber tires which cannot typically be processed are available throughout the world. The addition of waste material to concrete mixes, such as shredded rubber from discarded tires, would have the additional benefit of reducing the amount of unusable waste normally sent to landfills [4], [5]. Adopting the technology surrounding SCRC as well as other waste material substitutions as standard procedure would thereby significantly reduce the construction industrys negative environmental impact. Efficiency As with efficiency concerning sustainable resources, SCRC is also efficient in regards to structural and spatial design. While SCRC has a reduced strength capacity from standard SCC, its increased ductility allows for the design of more slender beam-column joints with equivalent structural performance. Utilization of SFRSCRC increases both the strength capacity and ductile behavior of beam-column connections, which may be used to design ever smaller joints. This opportunity to adopt more slender joints has numerous implications for overall efficiency. Using less material per story reduces the story dead load, which in turn allows for increasingly slender supporting beam-column joints. By reducing the material required for appropriate structural design, the overall construction and material costs are reduced. This effect is compounded with each successive story resulting in significant benefits for multi-story buildings. Furthermore the allowance of more slender beamcolumn joints allows for a reduced total story height. Building height restrictions limit the number of stories that may be designed for a given structure. Condensing the stories into a smaller vertical space allows for more stories to be designed given the same height restrictions. Thus designing beam-

Figure 1 Load-deflection curve for monotonic loading. All curves are linear up to the first cracking load, at which point the curves flatten due to the formation of microcracks and the yielding of the reinforcement steel. While the strength capacity of SCRC is less than SCC, the ductility of SCRC is increased significantly over SCC. Furthermore, SFRSCRC outperformed SCC and SCRC in both strength and ductility [1]. IMPLICATIONS Public Safety The introduction of rubberized self-consolidating beam-column joints into structural design has significant implications for the design of frames utilizing these connections, especially in regards to public safety. SCRC and SFRSCRC joints have more ductile connections due to additional strain and flexural capacity. Energy may thus be dispersed more readily throughout the frame system which reduces the moments in the beam attached to the joint. This is especially useful in areas with high seismic activity such as California, where seismic loads rather than service loads typically govern the overall design. Increasing the flexural capacity of these connections lessens the likelihood of the collapse of an entire floor and increases the chances

column joints to be more slender allows for the opportunity for additional revenue for building owners as more property is available to be sold for business use. In these ways SCRC and SFRSCRC beam column joints allow for a more efficient use of materials and spatial design. CONCLUSIONS The cumulative absorbed energy for the SCRC and SFRSCRC specimens is enhanced considerably with

respect to SCC specimens. SCRC and SFRSCRC specimens show significantly increased ductile behavior and minimal stiffness and strength fatigue under cyclical loadings. This highly ductile behavior is most advantageous for earthquake-resistant structures. Additionally, rubberized concrete beamcolumn joints have significant positive implications for public safety, sustainability, and design efficiency. These results indicate that SCRC and SFRSCRC beam-columns exhibit behaviors desirable for use in structural design.

WORKS CITED [1] N. Ganesan, Bharati Raj, and A.P. Shashikala, Behavior of self-consolidating rubberized concrete beam-column joints, American Concrete Institute Materials Journal, vol. 110, number 6, pp. 697-704, 2013. [2] D. Fedroff, S. Ahmad, and B.Z. Savas , Mechanical properties of concrete with ground waste tire rubber, Transportation Research Board Report, Number 1534, pp. 66-72, 1996. [3] N. Eldin and A. Senouci, Rubber-tire particles as concrete aggregate, Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering, vol. 5, issue 4, pp. 478-496, 1993. [4] Ashraf M. Ghaly and James D. Cahill IV, Correlation of strength, rubber content, and water to cement ratio in rubberized concrete, Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering, vol. 32, number 6, pp. 1075-1081, 2005. [5] M.C. Bignozzi and F. Sandrolini, Recycling tyre rubber in building materials, Used/post-consumer tyres, pp. 77-81, 2004.