## 2 Materials and Work Method  
### Materials  
Eight RC column specimens with various failure modes, i.e., flexural, flexural-shear, and shear failure modes, were tested under dynamic seismic loading. In general, for an RC column member under an applied lateral loading, its mechanical behavior is dominated by the flexural capacity and shear capacity. If the flexural capacity that is mainly contributed by the main bars dominates the mechanical behavior of the member, the failure pattern is defined as the flexural failure mode. If the shear capacity that is mainly contributed by the transverse reinforcement dominates the mechanical behavior of the member, the failure pattern is defined as the shear failure mode. In addition to the flexural and shear failure modes, for an RC column member, if the yielding point of the main bars exits under an applied lateral loading and its deformation capacity determines the shear failure, it can be classified into the flexural-shear failure mode [24]. The height of the specimens was 180 cm and their cross-sectional area was 40 \(\times\) 40 cm. The actual compressive strength of the concrete was 22--24 MPa. The main bars were SD420 of D22, and the stirrups were SD280 of D10. The specimens had the same tensile reinforcement ratio. Three stirrup ratios were used to examine the seismic reduction factors of the column specimens with three failure modes, which were flexural failure, flexural-shear failure,and shear failure. Table 1 provides detailed information about each specimen. The naming convention for specimens of this work includes three items. The first item represents the expected failure mode, the middle item represents the stirrup spacing, and the last item represents a specified damage level induced by dynamic loading.  
In the experiment, since each specimen was dynamically loaded with displacement control the displacement history of each specimen was obtained from a non-linear analysis of a selected traditional low-rise street house in Taiwan. Therefore, the designed specimens were assumed to be the column members in a selected building structure. Figure 1 shows that the selected building structure had five floors with a horizontal span (four spans in total) of 17.28 m and a longitudinal span (three spans in total) of 13.68 m. The first floor was 3.6 m high, and the other floors were 3 m high. The slab thickness of each floor was 12 cm. The cross-sectional sizes of all columns and the properties of the reinforcement and material in the structure were those of the specimens. These specimens had the same tensile reinforcement ratio. Three stirrup ratios were utilized to distinguish three failure modes, which were flexural failure, flexural-shear failure, and shear failure. Two spacing arrangements of the transverse reinforcement in the specimen section were designed and used in this work, as shown in Figure 2. The building was located on a second-category ordinary site in Jiangjun Dist., Tainan City. Consistent with the seismic design specifications for buildings in Taiwan, the seismic demand of the building was \(S_{DS}\) = 0.7 and \(S_{DI}\) = 0.52, and the peak ground acceleration \(A_{T}\) was 0.28 g, which are consistent with a design earthquake with a returning period of 475 years.