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Short columns can cause serious damage when subjected to an earthquake due to their high stiffness with low ductility. These columns can be exposed to multidirectional shear forces, which encouraged this study to investigate the behavior of structural short columns under bi-directional shear.

Finite element analysis (FEA) using ABAQUS is conducted and calibrated based on experimental data tested by previous researchers who studied the uni-directional behavior of short columns subjected to cyclic shear displacements. Then, the calibrated column models are further investigated to study the influence of bidirectional cyclic shear. Two scenarios are investigated, namely “simultaneous” and “sequential,” to compare the performance in terms of shear strength reduction.

The results show that the shear strength reduction significantly appears when 1:1 simultaneous bi-directional cyclic shear is applied. However, the shear reduction is more significant when the sequential scenario is applied. The seismic forces or deformations applied in orthogonal directions should be combined to achieve the maximum seismic response of structures as specified in Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) 356 Standard. Finally, the combinations presented in literature to consider bi-directional shear are investigated. Based on FE results, the effect of applied 1:0.30 bi-directional cyclic shear simultaneously does not result in significant effect on the considered columns properly design for seismic forces.

To investigate the effect of multidirectional shear forces on the shear strength capacity of short columns, the presented effect of multidirectional shear forces in literature to consider bi-directional shear are investigated.