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Performance of beam-column joints in the

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 PERFORMANCE OF BEAM-COLUMN JOINTS IN THE 2010-2012
CHRISTCHURCH EARTHQUAKES

Roberto T. Leon
Weng Yuen Kam
Stefano Pampanin

Synopsis: The design of beam-to-column joints in reinforced concrete moment frames is an area where USA and
New Zealand standards have diverged for many years. USA design documents, and ACI 352 in particular,
implicitly accept some damage in the form of shear cracking, bar slip and possible column hinging for joints frames
subjected to large lateral load reversals. The New Zealand approach, since the mid-1970s, has been to minimize that
type of damage and concentrate the deformations in plastic hinges in the beams by careful detailing of the joint and
adjacent beam region and keeping columns essentially elastic. The recent February 22, 2010 Christchurch
earthquake and its associated swarm present an excellent opportunity to contrast these approaches in terms of visual
performance for a variety of New Zealand structures detailed and built before and after the newer, more stringent
joint design guidelines were put in place. The main lesson from the Christchurch experience is the importance of
providing both some degree of lateral resistance, e.g. via beam-column joint moment-resisting capacity, and an
increased level of displacement capacity in secondary or gravity-frames to improve the overall building’s robustness
and seismic resilience when earthquake shaking beyond the conventional design level earthquake occurs.
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Keywords: beam-column joints, joints, moment resisting frames, seismic damage, seismic performance.
Roberto T. Leon, FASCE, FACI received his Ph.D. from UT-Austin in 1983 and is the D.H. Burrows Professor of
Construction Engineering at Virginia Tech. He was in Christchurch as an Erskine Fellow at the University of
Canterbury when the February 22, 2011 earthquake occurred.
Weng Yuen Kam, MACI, received his Ph.D. from the University of Canterbury in 2011 for developing techniques
for seismic assessment and retrofit of non-ductile reinforced concrete beam-column joints. He is a Senior Structural
Engineer with the Christchurch office of Beca Carter Hollings & Ferner Ltd., Auckland, New Zealand.
Stefano Pampanin, MACI, received his Ph.D. from the Politecnico of Milan and is associate professor in the
Department of Civil and Natural Resources Engineering at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch (NZ).

INTRODUCTION

The city of Christchurch, New Zealand, is intimately tied to the development of seismic design provisions through
the work of many researchers at the University of Canterbury (UoC) since the late 1960s. Along with others
(Bertero and Mahin, 1977), the work of UoC Profs. Robert Park and Thomas Paulay (Park and Paulay, 1975) in
particular, put the concepts of capacity design and ductility at the forefront of worldwide discussions on design
approaches for reinforced concrete frame and wall structures.

The critical role of connection performance in moment frames was clearly established through the early attempts to
develop mechanistic frameworks for beam-column joint shear behavior, which led to a basic agreement on design
approaches based on the truss and the diagonal strut mechanisms (Hanson and Conner, 1967; Corley and Hanson,
1969; Park and Paulay, 1973; Meinheit and Jirsa, 1981; Leon and Jirsa, 1986). However. multi-national (USA-
Japan-NZ-China) research (Cheung et al. 1991; Jirsa: 1911, ACI352R, 2002) failed to reach an agreement on the
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amount of the joint shear that should be apportioned to each mechanisms and on the relative importance of factors
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such as slab effects, bidirectional loading, axial loads and confinement on joint behavior; this divergence was
predominantly due to differences in interpretation of test results and acceptable performance criteria (Jirsa, 1991).

USA design documents, and the original ACI 352 report in particular (ACI 352, 1985), implicitly accept a high level
of damage in the form of shear cracking, bar slip and possible column flexural hinging for joints in moment frames
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subjected to large lateral load reversals. There have been several updates to the ACI 352 original document (ACI
352R, 2002) that have added additional qualifications, provisions and commentary to the original version, but the
basic design values have not changed significantly. The New Zealand approach, since the mid-1980s (NZS3101,
1982) has been to minimize that type of damage and concentrate the deformations in plastic hinges in the beams by
careful detailing of the joint region and explicit capacity-design of the joint and columns. The recent Christchurch
earthquakes present an excellent opportunity to contrast these approaches.

This paper first presents a short description of the series of earthquakes that hit the Canterbury area over the last two
years to highlight some important ground motion characteristics and local site effects that may have contributed to
the observed performance. It then briefly describes NZ reinforced concrete construction pre- and post-1982 when
the new design provisions began to be extensively used and gives a brief comparison of USA and NZ beam-column
joint design. Finally, the performance of beam-column joints on some typical buildings is summarized and
conclusions on the observed vs. expected performance are given.

THE CHRISTCURCH 2010-2012 EARTHQUAKES

The city of Christchurch lies on the Canterbury Plain, in the eastern central coast of the South Island of New
Zealand. Until 2010, the main seismic risk for the city was considered to come from the Alpine Fault that runs
along the western coast of the island at a distance of about 90 miles (130 km). Thus design accelerations for seismic
design in Christchurch (PGA=0.22g, with an elastic seismic coefficient for very soft soil site, and low-period
structures, class D, Cv=0.66g) were comparable to those in an old UBC Zone 3 in the USA (about 0.54g) for the
plateau of the spectrum. Beginning in September 2010 and continuing through today, ground movements in a series
of blind fault(s) have led to a swarm of large earthquakes that have devastated the central business district (CBD)
and much of the eastern suburbs of Christchurch (2011). Among the more than 10,000 tremors felt during this
period are the following main events Figure 1:
• Sept 4, 2010 (Darfield Earthquake): a Mw 7.1 complex strike-slip rupture at a distance of 40 km and focal depth
of about 10 km (about MMI 7-9 in Christchurch CBD) with a strong-motion main duration of 8-15 seconds and
estimated to have generated spectral acceleration on the order of 70% to 90% of the design level earthquake
(DLE) for Christchurch CBD.
• Dec. 26, 2010 (Boxing Day): a Mw 4.7 strike-slip rupture at about 2 km distance and 5 km focal depth (about
MMI 7-8 in CBD given its epicentral location), of about 5 seconds duration and spectral accelerations in the
order of 40-60% of DLE.
• Feb. 22, 2011 (Christchurch Earthquake): a Mw 6.2 oblique-reverse rupture at about 10 km distance and 5 km
focal depth (about MMI 9-10), about 8-10 seconds duration, and spectral accelerations in the order of at 150%
to more than 250% of the DLE.
• June 13, 2011: a Mw 6.0 oblique-reverse rupture at about 5 km distance and 5 km depth (about MMI 7-9), about
6-8 seconds duration, and about 90% DLE.
• December 23, 2011: a Mw 6.0 oblique-reverse rupture at about 5 km distance and 13-15 km depth (about MM 7-
8) and about 13-15 seconds duration, and about 50% of DLE.
• December 23, 2011: a Mw 6.0 oblique-reverse rupture at about 5 km distance and 10 km depth (about MM 7-9)
about 10-12 seconds duration, and about 60% of DLE.
The duration given above is defined by the approximate length of record containing horizontal accelerations over
0.1g within the CBD recording stations. The distance generally refers to the distance to the fault trace except for Dec
26 2010 and Dec 23 2011 earthquakes (distance to earthquake hypocenter).

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Figure 1 - Main events in the Canterbury Earthquake Swarm of 2010-2012 (GNS, 2011)

This series of earthquakes and in particular the very damaging February 22, 2010 event, share some important and
unusual ground motion characteristics that need to be considered when assessing building performance:
• Shallow hypocenters (5 to 10 km) and very close to the CBD (<10 km), thus being strong, near-field events
perhaps comparable only to those that affected Agadir (Morocco) in 1960, Managua (Nicaragua) in 1972 and
Chi-Chi (Taiwan) in 1999, events where the damaged city was located directly above or very close to the
epicenter.
• Large vertical accelerations with high frequency content, including one station located directly above the
epicenter with several peaks above 2g; spectra for these accelerations show a large peak around the 0.1sec
period and decrease rapidly after the 0.2 sec limit.
• Horizontal accelerations in the CBD for the February 22, 2010 in in one direction were in excess of 180% of
design code event (DLE) for some periods of interest; accelerations in at least one other event were close to
100% of the DLE.
• Relatively short duration for the individual events, but cumulatively in the range of 1 minute of strong motion.
• Significant evidence of near-source effects, topography and basin effects, and near-surface nonlinearities in the
soft glacial deposited soils in many of the strong ground motion recorded. The response spectra of the records
show a clear amplification in the 2 sec to 2.5 sec period range.
• Widespread manifestation of surface liquefaction and lateral spreading; and in parts of the CBD, significant
building differential settlements were observed.
Extensive discussion of these issues is beyond the topic of this paper. Readers are referred to the reports on
seismicity and ground motion for the Canterbury Earthquake Royal Commission for more details of the
seismological (Bradley, 2011) and ground deformation phenomena (Cubrinovski et al., 2011), as well as to the
Special Issues of the Bulletin of the NZNSEE dedicated to this earthquake (NZSEE, 2011)
A good idea of the intensity of ground motion can be gleaned from the response spectra derived from the records of
the principal horizontal motions at four stations around the CBD. Figure 2 shows the data for the four stations, their
average, and the 475-year and 2475-year design spectra for central Christchurch. It is clear that the February 22,
2010 event was well beyond the DLE and those structures with a fundamental period in the range of about 1 to 2
seconds (frames in the 10 to 20 story range by conventional wisdom) were particularly hard hit. In addition, the
figure highlights the variability of records obtained in a relatively small area; all four stations were within 1.5 km of
the center of the CBD and the large differences are probably due primarily to local soil conditions.

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Figure 2 - Spectra from 4 stations in the CBD (Kam 2011)

Further description of the intensity of ground motions experienced in the Christchurch CBD, and how these compare
to those used in design of new buildings prior to 22 February 2011, and the general overview of the structural
performance of buildings of different types during the 2010-2011 Canterbury earthquakes is available in a report
published elsewhere (Kam and Pampanin, 2011).
CHRISTCHURCH BUILDING STOCK AND NZ SEISMIC DESIGN PROVISIONS
The building stock in the Central Business District (CBD) of Christchurch was similar to that of many US
Midwestern and eastern cities. There was a very large number of low-rise commercial and residential unreinforced
masonry (URM) structures predating the early 1930s, when the Hawkes Bay earthquakes clearly exposed the
vulnerability of this type of construction in New Zealand. These earthquakes led to the first “Draft General
Earthquake Building Bylaw” tabled in the New Zealand Parliament in June 1931 and the first New Zealand
building code (NZS95, 1935) both of which led to changes in NZ building construction similar to those in California
following the 1932 Long Beach earthquake. Performance of older URM structures in the Hawkes Bay earthquakes
was poor but consistent with what would be expected from that type of construction (Ingham and Griffith, 2011).
Low-rise masonry, wood and reinforced concrete buildings were prevalent in Christchurch until the early 1960s
when taller RC buildings became more common. The first modern seismic code (NZ1990, 1965) was introduced in
1965 and extensively revised in 1976 (NZ4203, 1976) to bring issues related to ductility to the fore, and reissued
with major changes to the accompanying reinforced concrete provisions (NZ3101, 1982) in 1984. For performance
studies of RC structures, the 1976 edition separates designs with some very limited prescriptive seismic detailing
(pre-1976) from those where capacity design and large ductilities were required (post-1976 and particularly post-
1982). A new 1992 edition contained substantial revisions to the loading portion of the code, and updated design
provisions were incorporated in both this 1992 and the most recent 2004 versions of NZ4203 (MacRae et al., 2011).
In 1968, the local authorities (city councils) were empowered to regulate the strengthening of buildings deemed to
constitute an earthquake risk under the Local Municipal Corporations Act 1968 and the Local Government Act
1974. However, these laws focused primarily on strengthening or demolition of unreinforced masonry structures. It
was not until the legislation of the 2004 New Zealand Building Act that the definition of earthquake risk buildings
and requirement for earthquake strengthening extended to other construction forms such as reinforced concrete.
Through the 1970s and until today a number of tall moment frame or combined wall-moment frame reinforced
concrete (RC) structures were erected in Christchurch. Figure 3 shows some of the taller concrete buildings in
Christchurch, including the Grand Chancellor Hotel (RC, 21 stories, 85 m, 1985), the Forsyth Barr Tower (RC, 18
stories, 70 m, 1989), and the Price/Waterhouse/Coopers (PWC) Tower (RC, 22 stories, 76 m, 1988).

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Figure 3 -Mid-to-high rise buidlings in Christchurch CBD (early 1990s) and relevant case study buildings
(adopted from (Kam, et al. 2011)). 3D Photo sketch courtesy of Christchurch City Council Library.

An important and relevant difference between NZ and USA modern RC multistory construction is the widespread
use of precast systems in NZ as part of the main lateral resisting systems beginning in the late 1980s as well as part
of the gravity load and floor systems (Park, 2002)
 BEAM-COLUMN JOINT DESIGN IN RC MOMENT FRAMES
It is widely accepted that the design of a ductile moment resisting frame subjected to large seismic forces should be
based on (a) developing initially a weak-beam strong-column mechanisms to resist lateral loads and limit drifts, and
(b) maintaining the gravity load capacity of the system so as to prevent collapse (ACI 352R, 2002). The design of
beam-column joints is geared towards both insuring that hinges form in the beam regions adjacent to the joint (i.e.,
creating a weak-beam strong-column mechanism), and limiting the stiffness and strength deterioration of both joints
and columns so that neither large P-∆ effects nor loss of vertical load carrying capacity occur. These objectives can
be reached by minimizing the amount of shear cracking in the joint, limiting the bond deterioration of the beam and
column bars passing through the joint, providing good confinement both with closely spaced ties in the joint and
boundary elements, and limiting the axial loads in the columns to below the balance point so that little loss of
flexural capacity occurs as the axial loads vary during an earthquake.
Historically, the nominal shear stress in the joint (vjoint) has been assumed as the primary variable in joint design.
Assuming that hinges form on either side of a joint, the design forces for an interior beam column joint are shown in
Figure 4, where the labels C and T refer to compression and tension forces in the reinforcement and V to the shears
around the joint; the first subscript (b, s or c) refers to the beams, slabs or the columns; and the second subscript to
the location of the element (left (2) or right (1) for the beams, top (1) or bottom (2) layer of slab reinforcement, and
top (1) or bottom (2) for the column).

Vcol be
1
Ts1 A s, s1
C b2 T b1 A s1
T s2 A s, s2
Vu
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Vu

T b2 C b1 A s2
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Vcol
2
Joint Elevation Beam Section

Figure 4 - Forces acting on an interior beam-column joint under lateral loads (ACI 352R, 2002)

Taking a free body diagram of the upper half of the joint, the total joint shear (Vjoint) is given by the summation of
the forces from the reinforcement in top right beam (Ts, b1) and slab (Ts1 and Ts2) yielding in tension plus the
compression force from the left beam, which is equal, from equilibrium, to the tensile yielding force of the bottom
left beam reinforcement (Tb2), minus the shear from the top column (Vc1). Because capacity design principles
require that expected rather than nominal values be used for the strength of the materials, an overstrength factor (α)
is usually added to the beam forces. To obtain a stress, this force is divided by an area generally consisting of the
confined width of the joint (bj) times the column width (hc). Thus the shear design criterion can be summarized as:

Vjoint α ( As ,b1 + As , s1 + As , s 2 + As ,b 2 ) f y − Vc1

v joint = = ≤ (γ f c' , β f c' or X)
b j hc b j hc
where γ is the joint stress multiplier in USA design, β is the corresponding NZ value, and X is a limit stress value.
The level of allowable shear stress also depends on the level of axial load, a variable not considered here. As axial
load in columns varies widely when a structure is subjected to large lateral displacements and it is not necessarily
correlated to the level of shear stress in the joint at any particular moment in time, USA guidelines do not formally
incorporate this parameter into its design recommendations.
For design, this nominal shear stress needs to limited to some value (γ) tied in American codes to the f c' as are
most shear demand limits. USA design recommendations have traditionally allowed values of γ ranging from 15 for
exterior columns to 20 for interior ones (ACI 352 2002); the values of γ depend primarily on the number of
confining elements around the joint, while bj and hc depends on the relative dimensions of the beam and columns.
Note that these values are tied to the concrete strength expressed in psi units; for SI units, the corresponding values
of γ range between 1.25 and 1.66 with the concrete strength (f’c) expressed in MPa units.
New Zealand design provisions impose lower limits (maximum nominal joint shear stress less than or equal to β =
0.2 f’c or X =10MPa) and also require that vertical shears be accounted for (i.e., from forces obtained by taking a
free body of the right hand side of the joint in Figure 4, which results in a similar expression as shown above but
with beam and column indices interchanged). New Zealand design provisions implicitly consider the variable angle
compression theory, in which the allowable joint shear capacity is related to vertical axial stress, available bond
capacity and joint panel geometry (Paulay and Priestley, 1992; NZS3101, 2006).
USA and NZ provisions differ markedly on how to resist joint shears. As noted earlier, two mechanisms have been
recognized to carry the shear forces: (1) a large diagonal concrete strut acting between the corners of the join and
sustained by the framing members, and (2) a truss made up of smaller concrete struts and tension ties provided by
the transverse reinforcement (Figure 5). Current USA provisions rely primarily on the strut mechanisms and only
require a nominal amount of transverse reinforcement in the joint. This approach is based on test observations that
indicate that very large shears can be sustained by the joints
if adequately confined by framing members (Meinheit and
Jirsa 1981; Kurose, Guimaraes et al. 1991). It is implicitly
accepted in the USA design that joint shear distortion, bar
slippage and diagonal joint cracking may be acceptable at
ultimate, provided that the joint shear core is adequately
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confined and the gravity load carrying capacity is preserved
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NZ provisions, on the other hand, assume a combination of
compression strut (concrete contribution) and truss
mechanism (horizontal and vertical joint reinforcing). The
mechanical model adopted in the NZ provisions assumes
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horizontal and vertical joint reinforcing are necessary to

transfer joint shear forces via bond in the absence of a
concrete contribution to transfer any diagonal tensile
stresses. The contribution of the compression strut to the Figure 5 - Strut and truss mechanisms.
joint shear strength is significantly lower in the NZ
provisions compared to the USA provisions, thus resulting
in larger amounts of transverse reinforcement in NZ-
designed beam-column joint as the truss mechanism
dominates the design. The rationale behind the NZ choice
is that the compression strut contribution is limited by the
bond degradation of the beam bars and tension yield
penetration, both consequences of significant plastic hinging
of the framing beams.
The difference in approaching the design of shear
reinforcement in the joint has sometimes been characterized
as an empirical (USA) vs. a mechanistic (NZ) approach
(Aoyama, 1993). While the exact ratio of transverse steel in
the joint by USA vs. NZ provisions will vary depending on
the beam and column geometry and the amount of
reinforcement, it will not have been unusual for a USA
typical interior bidirectional joint design in the late 1980s or
early 1990s to require 2 to 3 times less transverse joint
reinforcement than a comparable NZ design as shown in Figure 6 - Comparison of transverse reinforcement
Figure 6. requirements (Aoyama, 1991)
As discussed, the differences in the consideration of the concrete strut vs. truss mechanisms contribution to the joint
shear strength are tied to the beam longitudinal bar bond capacity and the bar anchorage requirements. USA
provisions typically require beam and column bars to have a minimum anchorage of 20 bar diameters (db) for Grade
60 steel with the requirement tied linearly to (fy/60) for other bar grades, while NZ provisions over the years have
decreased from 36db to about 27db on average. Limited studies have shown that anchorage lengths between 16db and
20db for Grade 60 bars are associated with rapid loss of bond and large slips under cyclic loading, with associated
large losses of stiffness and strength at a given drift (Leon, 1989). Intermediate values around 24db show markedly
better performance, with moderate bond deterioration and very small slips. Joints with anchorages in excess of 28db
seem to preclude slip. For USA joints, the short embedment provided (20db) imply that bar slip will occur early in
the load history and that the resulting slip will tend to close the existing flexural crack at the joint face and provide
the external boundary conditions needed to sustain a strut mechanism (Figure 5(a)). For NZ joints, the long
anchorages (>27db) will imply no slip and thus the formation of a full depth flexural crack at the joint boundary
which would reduce the efficiency of the strut mechanism; the selection of a truss mechanism (Figure 5(b)) as the
primary horizontal force transfer one is consistent with this expected behavior.
The last item of practical importance and where USA and NZ practice also differ considerably is on the ratio of
column to beam flexural strengths needed to develop a clear weak beam-strong column mechanism. This issue is
complicated by the use of a capacity design approach that requires finding the most likely maximum strength of the
beams (including the effect of slabs and strain hardening), while simultaneously underestimating the column flexural
capacity, which will change with axial load, potential local cover spalling and bidirectional demands (Leon and
Jirsa, 1986). Park and Paulay (Park and Paulay, 1975) proposed values in the neighborhood of 1.8 to 2.0 for
uniaxially loaded joints and 3.0 for biaxially loaded ones. The USA provisions specify a minimum of 1.2 for this
overstrength factor.
An issue which received considerable attention in NZ in since the 1970s is the phenomenon of “beam elongation” as
a consequence of the beam bars yielding within the plastic hinge region. The beam elongation itself is a combination
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of a geometrical contribution (the development of a neutral axis during the cyclic motion) and a material
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contribution related to the accumulation of plastic strain in the rebars. The effects induce an elongation of the
columns center-to-center distance with significant potential damage to the diaphragm-to-lateral resisting system
connection (extensive cracking at the interface and rupture of topping mesh and/or starter bars), and large horizontal
axial forces in the beams and beam-column joint, further compromising the hierarchy of strength between beam and
column (Fenwick and Davidson, 1993; Megget and Fenwick, 2003). NZ research (Peng et al., 2009) has proposed a
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higher beam over-strength due to slab contribution and beam growth induced axial forces for ductile frames.
If one considers beam-column joints from the standpoint of performance based design (PBD), current USA design
provisions would appear to provide only collapse protection under the Design Level Earthquake (DLE), as they
appear to use minimum values for all three main design parameters (i.e., high joint shear stresses, small anchorage
lengths and low ratios of column to beam moment capacity). The NZ provisions, which are at the other end of the
spectrum, should provide superior performance and protection under a higher-than DLE event. The rest of this
paper intends to explore what was learned in the Christchurch February 22, 2011 earthquake about beam-column
joint performance and how this knowledge can be utilized. By necessity, this is a one-sided assessment; one will be
only able to decide if the NZ provisions worked as expected and not whether USA provisions are sufficient. It
should be also clearly understood that the ACI 352 provisions as discussed here constitute a minimum set of
requirements; ACI 352 contains an extensive commentary that indicates ways of improving joint performance.
Moreover, only a subset of ACI 352 provisions are incorporated into the main ACI 318 document. This approach is
consistent with USA practice where great freedom is given to the designers and only some critical minimum criteria
are enforced. The design code changes in the USA after the failures observed in the 1994 Northridge earthquake in
both steel welded connections and precast structures should serve as reminders that any seismic design code can be
improved, particularly in its detailing requirements.

BUILDING PERFORMANCE
The February 22, 2011 earthquake caused very serious damage to the Christchurch CBD, resulting in the total
collapse of two RC buildings (Pyne Gould Corporation (PGC) and Canterbury Television (CTV)) and the loss of 18
and 115 lives in those two structures, respectively. An additional 42 people died in Christchurch almost exclusively
due to the collapse of URM facades and parts of buildings into the streets. The damage was so extensive and the
risk of collapse of damaged structures as a result of the aftershocks so large that the entire CBD was declared an
inaccessible zone to the public, and remained so for many months. It is estimated that less than a dozen of the 500
largest structures in the CBD will be operable in the future. In many cases the age and type of the structure makes
repairs and retrofits of only moderately damaged structures uneconomical.
There were about 175 buildings with 5 stories or more in the Christchurch CBD; of these about 51% are RC frames,
25% are RC wall buildings, 13% are reinforced concrete masonry, 6% are RC frames with infills, and 5% are steel
buildings (Kam et al., 2011). A good idea of the building inventory and distribution of damage can be found in
Figure 7, which shows the number of buildings receiving red, yellow or green tags from the Building Safety
Evaluation (BSE) procedure as of June 2011 (Kam and Pampanin, 2011). It is interesting to note that while about
54% of the pre-1970 RC buildings were either red or yellow tagged, a value consistent with the expected
performance from buildings with little seismic detailing, about 44% of the post-1970s buildings also fell in these
categories. This suggests that while in general modern codes successfully achieved the life safety performance
objectives in the 22 February, 2011 earthquake, modern codes did not result in an appreciable improvement of
performance in terms of post-earthquake functionality or damage avoidance. Due to the rapid nature of the BSE
screening for immediate risk; the tagging damage data should be interpreted with some care depending on the final
purpose of any study. However, the reality is that a very high proportion of reinforced concrete buildings in the CBD
has been or will be demolished.

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Figure 7 - Distribution of tags in RC buildings (kam and Pampanin, 2011)

In the following sub-sections, preliminary observations on the seismic performance of reinforced concrete beam-
column joints for selected case-study buildings (some of which are shown in Figure 3) are discussed. The reader
should be careful when assessing the following sections which center on buildings that performed poorly; a much
larger proportion of buildings did perform as expected and met the key objectives of life-safety as set by the New
Zealand Building Code (Royal Commission, 2012). More detailed description of the damage observation of
reinforced concrete buildings is available elsewhere (Kam et al., 2012; Expert, 2011; Royal Commission, 2012).
Pre-1970s RC Buildings
Typical NZ reinforced concrete construction before NZ4203 (1976) shares
many of the usual lateral-load resisting system shortcomings present in
USA moment frames of the same period:
• Insufficient confinement in the columns, joints, and wall boundary
elements
• Poor anchorage detailing
• Little attention to completeness of load paths
• Presence of short columns due to interaction of main structure and
non-structural infills
• Large irregularities in strength and stiffness both in plan and elevation
• Little or no consideration of deformation compatibility between
lateral and gravity load systems
In addition, NZ construction utilized smooth (plain) round bars well into
the 1960s. Figure 8 shows typical damage to a column in a four-story
1960s building; the presence of smooth bars, lack of confinement and high
shear demands from captive column effects are all evident. Regardless of
the fact that most of the first story columns in this building showed similar
failure patterns, there was little residual deformation and the building did
not appear in imminent danger of collapse. This is probably due to the
large number of columns present and the unintended contribution of some
masonry non-structural walls. Some examples of the performance of this Figure 8 - Column failure in 1960s
type of construction are discussed next. building.
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Securities House (8-storey building, 1973) - Although the ground floor in this building appears very open and
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susceptible to weak story formation (Figure 9(a)), the presence of a large eccentric C-shaped shear wall seems to
have helped limit interstory drifts. Interestingly, only minor cracking was observed in this wall, indicating that the
wall and frame probably acted together to resist the inertial forces as there was no evidence of large torsional
displacements. Columns are typically 457 mm (18 in.) square, reinforced with 12 distributed D28 (28 mm, #10)
longitudinal deformed bars and D10 (#4) stirrups at 230 mm (9 in.) on center, with the beam-column joints are
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reinforced with three to five R4 (#4) ties. On the South face, typical beams were narrow and deep (213mm x 750mm
or 8 in. by 30 in.) with two D24 (#8) and one D20 (#6) at the top and two D20 (#6) and one D16 (#5) at the bottom.
The beams on the South face were placed flush with the exterior face of the column resulting in a very large
eccentricity in the joint. Nominal material strengths were Grade 40 (276 MPa) for the steel and 20 MPa (3 ksi) for
the concrete.
Shear failure was evident in the captive columns in the second floor and shear cracking in the joint above (Figure
9(c)). This behaviour is consistent with what is described in the literature as a shear-hinge mechanism for poorly
detailed beam-column joints (Calvi et al., 2002). Damage to exterior columns, where there were two columns and
only one beam framing into the joint, was not visible. Almost all of the beam-column joints in the North façade of
this building showed similar shear cracking as the South façade (Figure 9(b)).
If one were to evaluate one of the joints shown in Fig. 9(c) with respect to the current main ACI joint design
criteria, it can be said that: (a) its design follows principles of capacity design, with the column-to-beam flexural
strength ratio close to 1.4, (b) the beam anchorage lengths at 19db are well above the 14db required for Grade 40; (c)
the joint shear reinforcement, with 5 R4 (#4) ties satisfies the minimum area but fails the spacing requirement of
hc/4 (actual is 150mm vs. 115mm max (6 in. vs. 4.5 in.)); and (d) the joint shear stress exceeding the limit by about
12% (note that this deficiency will disappear if the actual concrete strength were greater than 25MPa (3.8 ksi), a
very likely field condition). Therefore, even if this joint does not strictly meet all current ACI criteria, it is close in
most respects and thus the performance shown in Fig. 9 is probably indicative of what to expect if a joint designed
close to the ACI 352 limits is subjected to a major event. An interesting aside in this joint is that the joint
proportions are atypical of what ACI 352 has in mind, with the depth to height being about 1.66. This means that
the angle of inclination of the main compression strut is about 60 degrees, well above the 45 degrees or slightly less
that would be optimal for the strut mechanism.
 (a) (b) (c)

Figure 9 - 1970s RC building: (a) view of South façade , (b) failure in second floor captive columns in the
North façade, (c) close-up showing shear cracks in beam-column joints in the South façade.

Harcourts Building (5-storey, 1950s) - Extensive beam-

column damage to the exterior joints of one-way concrete
gravity frames is evident in the adjacent 1950s 5-storey
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building (Figure 10). The building comprises six one-way
RC “gravity” frames in the North-South direction and
several coupled- and single RC walls providing the majority
of the lateral-load resistance. The 5th floor, added in 1966,
was constructed out of light-weight steel framing. The
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building was reinforced with plain round bars. The primary

lateral load system was severely compromised with the
failure of the coupling beams and shear-core foundation
beam (Kam et al., 2011), resulting in excessive drift
demands on the concrete gravity frames. It is likely that the
RC frames resisted a significant portion of the lateral load in
the North-South direction and torsional load from the East- Figure 10 - Harcourt Building.
West shaking. All beam-column joints had no stirrups or
ties. The beam longitudinal bars were terminated with a 180
degree hook anchorage at the bottom, and a 90 degree hook
anchorage at the top. The exterior beam-column joints have
limited joint shear stress capacity (4.1 MPa (600psi)
according to ACI-318) and joint shear area (254 x 305mm).
The exterior beam-column joints on the Northern elevation,
despite having apparent confinement from the small beam
stub, had severe beam-column joint damage (Figure 11).
The interior joints however did not exhibit similar shear-
failure, with bond-failure of the plain bars along a wide
flexural crack at the framing beams providing the
displacement capacity while maintain vertical load-carrying
capacity. From the observed damage, it was apparent the
lateral and gravity load carrying capacity of the building was
severely compromised. The building subsequently partially
collapsed in an aftershock on 13 June 2011. Figure 11 - Damage to exterior joints.
 Canterbury Trade Union House (6-storey, 1974) - A different behavior is shown in another nearby building in
which very wide columns and lightly reinforced beams were used (Figure 12). Here the joint obviously was
subjected to very low shear stresses and the anchorage lengths were very long. A large number of the beams in the
lower two floors had several vertical flexural cracks, typically over a length of less than 1/3 the beam depth. This
behavior appears to be typical of very lightly reinforced concrete members where the yielding could not spread due
to tensile capacity of the concrete. The damage pattern of this building was largely attributed to the significant
differential settlement of the building due to severe liquefaction on the site. The building was founded on shallow
pad footings with tie ground beams. A differential settlement of over 200 mm was measured between the
longitudinal corners of the building. While the significant differential settlement and tilting of the building do not
appear to have had a catastrophic effect on this building, the building was well beyond repairability.
Police Headquarter, 15-storey, 1968 - Figure 13 shows a 15-storey reinforced concrete moment-resisting frame,
designed by the New Zealand Ministry of Works (MoW) in 1968. Three of the lower levels are a podium with
approximately twice the floor area of the tower level. As typical of the NZ MoW practice in the 1960-70s, the public
building was designed to a much higher standard than required by the existing building code. The tower structure
comprises two-way moment-resisting frames with cast-in-situ concrete slab, with six frames acting in one direction
and four in the other. Comparatively speaking, this building probably has twice as many moment resisting elements
as a modern USA building; this degree of redundancy is probably crucial to the satisfactory performance of this
structure. The beams and columns were designed to a degree of capacity design. The beam-column joints were
lightly reinforced and would not be in compliance with the current code; beam bars in the exterior joints were
anchored in external stub beams. In general, the building performed very well and maintained its function as the
police headquarter throughout all the earthquake events (Royal Commission 2012).
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Figure 12 - Canterbury Trade Union Building. Figure 13 - Police Headquarters Building.

Pyne Gould Corporation (PGC) Building (5-storey, 1963) - Unfortunately, one building in this category, the
Pyne Gould Corporation (PGC) building pancaked during the earthquake, killing 18 of its occupants. This five story
building was designed in 1963 and relied on shear walls to carry the lateral loads and perimeter gravity concrete
frames to carry vertical loads. Figure 14 shows plans of the first two floors of the building. The walls were 203 mm
thick (8 in.) and reinforced with a single mat of R16 mm bars (#5 plain) spaced at 381 mm (15 in.) both horizontally
and vertically. The columns were 245 mm square (10 in.) and reinforced with either 4 or 8 R25 mm (#8 plain) bars
and confined by two 6 mm (#2) smooth ties every 229 mm ( 9 in.), with the exception of the first story exterior
columns which were offset and consisted of 406 mm (16 in.) round columns (Beca 2011). The beam-column joints
were generally unreinforced with a 60mm (2.5”) diameter downpipe protruding through the center of the joint and
column. The beam longitudinal bars were poorly anchored with either a 180 degree hook or a 90 degree hook with
short development length. The exterior beam-column joints have limited joint shear strength ratio (5.2 MPa (750psi)
according to ACI-318) and small joint shear area (254 x 245mm).
As part of a seismic assessment in 1997, hollow 200mm by 100mm (8 in. by 4 in.) steel posts were added to the
exterior columns above the first floor as those columns had been determined to be very vulnerable to seismic forces.
As can be seen from Figure 14, there is a significant change in wall layout between levels 1 and 2 and potentially a
problem under the 2nd level NE portion of the wall. The building had some cosmetic damage from the Darfield
event and no apparent further damage from the Boxing Day (December 26, 2010) event.
There are a number of failure mechanisms
individually or in combination that may
have caused the global collapse of the PGC
building during the February 22 2011
earthquake (Royal Commission 2012). The
postulated collapse mechanism by one of
the technical investigations (Beca 2011) is
shown in Figure 15, with the tension
reinforcement on the West wall on the
second level failing first, followed by the
crushing of the columns on the East side of
the building. Figure 16 shows the collapsed
building, with the photograph taken prior to
any significant deconstruction of the
building. The intact columns elements
which were separated from the beams
suggest that the unconfined beam-column
connections could be the weakest link in the
gravity frame.
The collapse of the PGC buildings draws
attention to the vulnerability of lightly,
centrally -reinforced shear walls that carry
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all the lateral loads in a structure (Beca
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2011). Further, as the beam-column joints
of the gravity-only frames were had no
shear reinforcement and no hierarchy of
strength principle was used (the difference
in size/capacity between beams and
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columns is evident) the gravity frames were

unable to sustain significant inter-storey Figure 14 - Plans of Pyne Gould Building.
drift without disintegrating, as evident in
Figure 16. Not withstanding the other
critical structural weaknesses in the
building, including the poor frame/floor-
to-wall connections and vertical and plan
irregularity of the walls, the PGC building
illustrates the importance of the beam-
column joint detailing in tying the
gravity-frame structures together for
robustness, redundancy and resilience,
even if the frames were designed
primarily for gravity-load only.
1980s Buildings
The 1980s is a decade marking a
significant shift in RC construction in NZ
for at least three reasons. First, with the
release of the NZS4203 (NZS4203, 1976)
and NZS3101 (NZS3101, 1982), capacity
design, and its associated concepts of
inelastic behavior, seismic detailing and
ductility, became ingrained into design
practice. It can be argued that at that time Figure 15 - Collapse sequence.
NZ3101:1982 was by far the most advanced and
comprehensive design document available around the
world for the seismic design of RC structures. Second,
in an effort to improve economy and construction
quality, precasting of large parts of RC structures
became common. Although recognized at the time as
potential problems, it is unclear whether the design code
provided either guidance on how to calculate diaphragm
forces or comprehensive detailing for precast structures.
Third, the perception that seismic design was reaching a
new maturity level allowed designers to try new design
concepts, particularly ones that clearly separated
vertical and horizontal load resisting systems. Lastly the
recent availability of computer programs for numerical
analyses and the reality of a construction boom might
have contributed to reduce the joint reinforcement to a Figure 16 - Collapsed Pyne Gould Building.
code minimum value.
Buildings exhibiting ductile beam-sway mechanism, 1980s - In general, reinforced concrete frame buildings
designed to the NZS3101:1982 and NZS4203:1976 performed reasonably well and as expected, with only a few
exceptions that unfortunately included the catastrophic failure of the CTV building. A large majority of the modern
reinforced concrete moment-resisting frame buildings of various heights exhibited moderate-to-severe ductile beam
plastic hinge mechanisms commensurate with the seismic excitation (e.g., Figure 17). Column or beam-column joint
distress/damage was not observed in most of the modern concrete frame buildings inspected by the authors. Details
on the performance of buildings exhibiting ductile beam-sway mechanism, are given elsewhere (Kam et al., 20911;
Royal Commission, 2011). Several buildings mentioned above highlighted and confirmed other critical structural
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weaknesses observed and partly expected in ductile moment-resisting frame buildings (at least according to NZ
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design/construction practice):
• Sliding precast concrete stairs with inadequate seating length and/or gaps (Forysth Barr, GCH, Clarendon)
• Vertical and in-plan irregularity leads to poor performance (GCH, CTV)
• Inadequately confined “gravity-load only” or secondary columns (CTV)
• Inadequacy of cold-drawn brittle mesh as topping reinforcement for floor diaphragm (Clarendon, Branningan)
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• Inadequate shallow foundations for buildings in liquefiable ground (PWC, Forsyth Barr)
• Non-structural and structural damage beyond reparability threshold (PWC, Branningan, many others).

Figure 17 - Typical beam-sway hinging observed in modern post-1976 reinforced concrete frames.

The discussion of these critical weaknesses is beyond the scope of this paper; interested readers are referred to other
reports (Kam et al., 2011; DHB, 2011; Royal Commission, 2012)
A number of these high-rise buildings was already subjected to some level of damage in the September 4, 2010
earthquake due to the significant seismic demand in the long-period (Kam, Pampanin et al. 2010). It is noteworthy
that most of the mid- to high-rise RC frame buildings have been considered uneconomical to repair, even though
they have exhibited good ductile behaviour in a severe earthquake, consistent with the design expectations according
to the current NZ seismic code (NZS3101, 2006).
Clarendon Tower, 1987 – Diaphragm failure - The building shown in Figure 18 is a 20-storey building with
ductile RC perimeter frames, internal gravity frames and flange-hung supported precast double-tee flooring. The
perimeter moment-resisting frames comprise individual precast T and cross-shaped beam-column joints with in-situ
beam stitch connections. The beam-column joints are well reinforced with typically four legs of R12 (~ #4) stirrups.
A cast-in-place 60mm topping with cold-drawn wire mesh reinforcement was used. Cracked concrete topping and
slab mesh fracture were observed along the supporting beams at several upper storeys (8-10th floors were inspected)
(e.g.,Figure 19(a)). The largest horizontal crack parallel to the double-tee flange support was approximately 20mm
to 40mm wide. In several locations at the Northern bays, the precast floors have dropped vertically about 10 to
20mm, indicative of loss of precast floor seating support.

Floor slab cracks

Precast double-tee along the beams
floor unit span (approximate)

Torsion
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Collapsed precast
staircase
North
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Figure 18 - Floor plan illustrating observed damage of a 20-storey ductile concrete perimeter frames building
(Kam, Pampanin et al. 2011)

Figure 19 illustrates extreme examples in which extensive floor diaphragm damage with near loss of precast flooring
unit supports occurred due to the beam elongation effect. As discussed earlier, the beam elongation effect from
ductile beam plastic hinge behaviour may result in adverse damage of the floor diaphragm(Peng 2009). This is
especially true in New Zealand where almost all floor diaphragms in multi-storey concrete buildings comprise
precast flooring elements with a thin layer of reinforced concrete topping.
Canterbury Television (CTV) building, 1986 – Collapse - Amongst this group of buildings is the 6-story CTV
building, designed in 1986 and which collapsed catastrophically in the February 22, 2010 earthquake resulting in
115 casualties. The collapse of the CTV and PGC buildings resulted on over 70% of all casualties in this event, far
outstripping the loss of life from collapse of the far more vulnerable URM structures common in the Christchurch
CBD. This puts these two buildings into the “killer” building category, buildings that need to be carefully considered
for any pathological weaknesses. Figure 20 shows some of the primary structural features of the building, with the
lateral load system outlined in blue and the vertical load carrying columns in green (Hyland and Smith 2012). The
vertical load carrying system consisted of 400mm (16 in.) round, lightly reinforced columns (typically eight 20 mm
bars with 6 mm spirals at 250 mm pitch or eight #6 bars with #2 spirals at 10 in.). The columns have conventional
50mm cover, which in this case leads to only about 50% of the total area being in the lightly confined zone. The
connections for the gravity system appear to be very vulnerable, as the system consisted of precast beams framing
around the columns and carrying steel decks for the floor system (Figure 21).
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Figure 19 - Observed failure of floor diaphragm due to “beam-elongation” from beam hinging of the ductile
concrete perimeter frames.

The design basis, whether this building complied with existing codes, and the collapse mechanism are currently
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(August 2012) under the investigation of the Canterbury Royal Commission of Inquiry (DBH, 2001, Royal
Commission, 2012). The columns of the gravity system appear to have been designed as pin-ended members, and
thus designed to carry only axial loads and with no seismic detailing required at all. The code in force at the time
would have allowed this assumption only if the interstory drifts would be small and the columns capable of
withstanding those displacements elastically and without loss of axial load carrying capacity. The designer appears
to have relied on diaphragm action and the large strength and stiffness of the walls to ensure this condition;
however, both the very limited deformation capacity of the columns and the very limited strength of the diaphragm
connection to the core as designed seems to show, a posteriori, that this assumption was unrealistic, more so when
considering a much higher-than-design level demand.
Hearings by the Royal Commission have highlighted that the beam-column joint reinforcing in the CTV building
did not comply with the joint shear reinforcing and maximum spiral spacing requirements of the 1982 revision of the
NZ Concrete Code (NZS3103, 1982). The structural drawings did not appear to specify any specific joint transverse
reinforcement. It was assumed the 6mm spiral at 250 mm pitch transverse reinforcing of the columns would extend
into the beam-column joint region. However, after further inspection of the precast beam longitudinal bars
arrangement, it was concluded in the course of the Royal Commission’s hearings, that it was possible that no joint
reinforcing spiral can be easily placed within the joint region. No intact beam-column joint was found during post-
earthquake damage inspection and several construction defects of the connections (e.g. no surface roughening and
no joint stirrups) were discovered (DHB, 2012, Royal Commission, 2012).
In a number of interior beam-column joints, the beam longitudinal reinforcement was terminated with a 90 degree
hook anchorage in the mid-region of the beam-column joint zones. As such, there was no effective lap length
between the longitudinal bars and concrete tensile capacity would be required to keep the joint intact as the beam
longitudinal bars pulled away from the joint. This detailing would not have complied with the current New Zealand
Standards NZS3101 or ACI-318. The Royal Commission concluded that the major flaw of the beam-column joint
detailing and design was one of the primary causes of collapse of the CTV building
 Figure 20 - View of the CTV Building structural system (Hyland and Smith 2012)
(DBH 2012; Royal Commission 2012)..
.
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Figure 21 - Details of diaphragm to core connections; at left are details of the drag bars added to levels 4
through 6 in 1991 (Hyland and Smith 2012).
 Price Waterhouse Cooper (PWC) Building, 1985 – Beam Sway Mechanism - The Price Waterhouse Coopers
(PWC) Building, a 22 storey reinforced concrete building designed and constructed in the mid-late 1980s (Restrepo,
1993; Park, 2002) represents a “text-book” in terms of ductile seismic response according to a beam-sway
mechanism (Figure 22). The building seismic resisting systems comprise perimeter moment-resisting frames in both
directions, with flexible interior frames for gravity load only. The precast concrete frames, constructed according to
an emulation of cast-in-place concrete with a wet connection at mid-span of the beams and thus outside the plastic-
hinge zone, behaved very well, with beam-hinging occurring at the beam-column interface at many floors along the
elevation of the building, thus developing an beam-sway mechanism. A proper hierarchy of strength or capacity
design was adopted to protect the column from any inelastic mechanism and concentrated damage in well-developed
plastic hinges in the beams. The interior joints were typically well reinforced with 4 to 5 legs of 10mm (#3)
diameter stirrups at spacings of 100mm or less. The corner beam-column joints were reinforced with 5 legs of 20mm
diameter welded stirrups in both directions (Figure 23). No noticeable cracking was evident even in the exterior-
corner columns belonging to both direction frames and thus subject to a particularly high demand.

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Figure 22 - Price Waterhouse Cooper Building joint performance.
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Figure 23 - Beam-column joint detail for PWC building.

 CONCLUSIONS
The unique and unprecedented series of severe earthquake events in Christchurch and the substantial damage
observed to the older “non-ductile” and also modern reinforced concrete buildings is an invaluable “learning lesson”
for earthquake engineering. In a number of modern (1980s onwards) ductile-moment resisting frames studied by the
authors (of which a selection is presented herein), it is evident the New Zealand design of beam-column joint for
ductile moment resisting frames performed as expected. It is also clear that buildings with beam-column joints that
were not well-detailed for seismic action generally lack the overall robustness and structural system ductility, as
evident in the collapsed CTV and PGC buildings. This is in particular true if the primary seismic bracing element
failed (e.g., the walls in CTV, PGC and Harcourts) in an earthquake shaking significantly stronger than in the design
level earthquake.
While both New Zealand and USA design provisions for beam-column joints of reinforced concrete frames differ,
the lessons from Christchurch highlight the importance of providing some degree of beam-column joint reinforcing
for both moment-resisting frames and secondary gravity frames, for the overall building’s robustness and seismic
resilience at earthquake shaking beyond the conventional design level earthquake. A final and important
consideration is that regardless of the original intent, most of the buildings described above have or will be
demolished as the cost of bringing these buildings into service is well beyond their replacement costs.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to acknowledge the excellent support provided by the New Zealand (NZ) Civil Defense, the
Christchurch City Council (CCC), New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering, (NZSEE) and University of
Canterbury (UoC) for the field reconnaissance and collection of the structural drawings The first author benefitted
from an Erskine Fellowship at the University of Canterbury from early February through May of 2011 and that
financial help is gratefully acknowledged. The field reconnaissance and research by the second and third authors
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was funded by the Natural Hazards Research Platform (NHRP) short-term Recovery Project.
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