Probabilistic Shear Strength Model of Reinforced Concrete Exterior Beam-Column Joints.

A major disadvantage of the existing joint shear strength models is that they cannot consider the shear-resistance mechanisms and various uncertainties comprehensively. In order to overcome this limitation, a probabilistic shear strength model of reinforced concrete (RC) exterior beam-column joints was proposed. A simplified deterministic shear strength model for RC exterior beam-column joints was derived first by considering the contributions of the diagonal strut mechanism and truss mechanism. Then the probabilistic shear strength model for RC exterior beam-column joints was developed by taking into account both aleatory and epistemic uncertainties. Furthermore, the posterior distributions of probabilistic model parameters were updated by means of the Bayesian theory and the Markov chain Monte Carlo method. Finally, the proposed model was verified by comparison with 135 sets of experimental data and existing shear strength models. The results show that the proposed model has satisfactory prediction accuracy and low dispersion, which not only calibrates the influencing parameters on the prediction accuracy of the existing models, but also provides a probabilistic method to calibrate the confidence interval of the existing models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]