Damage Assessment of Steel Elements for Seismic Reliability Estimation of Structural Systems

Based on experimental investigations using steel plate elements subjected to cyclic uniaxial loading, a continuous damage and/or deteriorating process is examined. In order to describe intermediate as well as ultimate damage states, energy related criteria for different types of failure modes are suggested. Pure tensile and compressive/tensile bending damage could be distinguished clearly on the basis of plastic deformation properties. The respective dissipated energies of the investigated specimens are calculated by use of an axial load-displacement coordinate system whose origin is adaptively shifted so as to divide the regions of the two damage contributions. The combination of the considered damage contributions to one single damage index is performed by set theory operations. Calculated damage indices could be correlated fairly well to actual physical damage observed during the experimental investigations. 1