Reinforced concrete (RC) buildings that were built in the 1960s behave in a nonductile manner and do not meet current seismic design criteria. In this report, beam-column joints of such nonductile buildings are investigated using several performance-based criteria. Four half-scale RC exterior joints were tested to investigate their behavior in a shear-critical mode. The joints were subjected to quasi-static cyclic loading, and their performance was examined in terms of lateral load capacity, drift, axial load reduction in the column at high levels of drift, joint shear strength, ductility, shear angle, residual strength, and other PEER established performance criteria. Two levels of axial compression load in the columns were investigated, and their influence on the performance of the joint are discussed.
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