Seismic Assessment of Electric Power Transmission Concrete Beams

Reinforced concrete beams are widely used for transmitting electric power in urban environment in some countries like IRAN. In this paper, one kind of these RC beams are investigated and optimized. The available section can sustain lateral forces much more than necessary that’s why the need for optimizing the section seems essential. To achieve the optimized section, nonlinear programming is carried out by the use of analytical formulas from ACI. After that, the adequacy of the beam is checked by the use of pushover analysis. Finally, to obtain the actual behavior of the proposed sections, three specimens are constructed and tested. According to the provision for accepting these beams, a concentrated load should be exerted at the top of the beam and monotonically increases to obtain the pushover curve of the beam. Displacements at the top of the beam should not exceed certain values at different levels of load. Here, first of all, a new reinforcement arrangement is proposed for the beam based on nonlinear programming. After that, the adequacy of proposed reinforcement will be checked by the means of pushover analysis. Finally, three beams with proposed reinforcement arrangement are built and tested. The final results of all of the constructed beams satisfied the provisions, hence can be used in practice.