PSI - Issue 78

Teklewoin Haile Fitwi et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 78 (2026) 1775–1782

1778

Further, the column base incorporated a hinged support system to allow rotation while preventing undesired translations. At the end of the beam, a support system utilizing a steel tension/compression link equipped with a 300 kN capacity load cell enabled to restrain the vertical displacements while allowing horizontal movement. In addition, the experimental setup employed measurement instrumentations comprising linear potentiometers (LP) and Linear Variable Differential Transformers (LVDT) positioned to monitor the deformation response of the joint, beam and column elements. Fig. 3a illustrates the instrumentation arrangement. The FRCM strengthening configuration for the damaged specimens is shown in Fig. 3b. Specimens 2 and 3 were reinforced using an alternating layering sequence: two layers of fiber “A” followed by one layer of fiber “B” then one layer of fiber “C” with this e ntire sequence applied twice. This resulted in four total layers of the main joint reinforcement (Fiber "A") and two layers each of secondary reinforcement (Fiber "B" and "C").

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Fig. 2. (a) beam -column joint steel reinforcement detail; (b) horizontal loading protocol.

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Fig. 3. (a) instrumentation; (b) retrofitting scheme.