ABSTRACT
The correct estimate of curvature ductility of reinforced concrete members has always been an attractive subject of study because it engenders a reliable estimate of the capacity of buildings under seismic loads. The majority of building stock needs structural assessment to certify its safety under revised seismic loads by new codes. Structural assessment of existing buildings, by employing nonlinear analyses tools like pushover, needs an accurate input of moment-curvature relationship for reliable results. In this chapter, analytical predictions of curvature ductility of reinforced concrete sections are presented. Relationships, in explicit form, to estimate the moment-curvature response are proposed, leading to closed form solutions after their verification with those obtained from numerical procedures. The purpose is to estimate curvature ductility under service loads in a simpler closed form. The influence of longitudinal tensile and compression reinforcements on curvature ductility is also examined and discussed. The spreadsheet program used to estimate the moment-curvature relationship, after simplifying the complexities involved in such estimates, predicts in good agreement with the proposed analytical expressions. In lieu of tedious hand calculations and approximations required in conventional iterative design procedures, the proposed estimate of curvature ductility provides a ready solution for a potentially safe design.
