For fast-built and safe precast concrete (PC) construction, the dry mechanical splicing method is a critical technique that enables a self-sustaining system (SSS) during construction with no temporary support and minimizes onsite jobs. However, due to limited experimental evidence, traditional wet splicing methods are still dominantly adopted in the domestic precast industry. For PC beam-column connections, the current design code requires achieving emulative connection performances and corresponding structural integrity to be comparable with typical reinforced concrete (RC) systems with monolithic connections. To this end, this study conducted the standard material tests on mechanical splices to check their satisfactory performance as the Type 2 mechanical splice specified in the ACI 318 code. Two PC beam-column connection specimens with dry mechanical splices and an RC control specimen as the special moment frame were subsequently fabricated and tested under lateral reversed cyclic loadings. Test results showed that the seismic performances of all the PC specimens were fully comparable to the RC specimen in terms of strength, stiffness, energy dissipation, drift capacity, and failure mode, and their hysteresis responses showed a mitigated pinching effect compared to the control RC specimen. The seismic performances of the PC and RC specimens were evaluated quantitatively based on the ACI 374 report, and it appeared that all the test specimens fully satisfied the seismic performance criteria as a code-compliant special moment frame system.

This study presents a dry precast concrete (PC) beam-column connection, and its target seismic performance level is set to be emulative to the reinforced concrete (RC) intermediate moment resisting frame system specified in ACI 318 and ASCE 7. The key features include self-sustaining ability during construction with the dry mechanical splicing method, enabling emulative connection performances and better constructability. Test specimens with code-compliant seismic details were fabricated and tested under reversed cyclic loading, which included a PC beam-column connection specimen with dry connections and an RC control specimen. The test results showed that all the specimens failed in a similar failure mode due to plastic deformations in beam members, while the hysteretic response curve of the PC specimen showed comparable and emulative performances compared to the RC specimen. Seismic performance evaluation was quantitatively addressed, and on this basis, it confirmed that the presented system can fully satisfy all the required performance for the intermediate RC moment resisting frame.