In the past few years, some experimental investigations have been conducted to verify seismic behaviour of fiber reinforced polymer reinforced concrete (FRP-RC) beam-column joints. Those researches were mainly focused on exterior beam-column joints without lateral beams. However, lateral beams, commonly exist in buildings, can significantly improve seismic performance of the joints. Moreover, the way the longitudinal beam bars are anchored in the joint, either using headed-end or bent bars, was not adequately addressed. This study aims to fill these gaps and investigate the shear capacity of FRP-RC exterior beam-column joints confined with lateral beams, and the effect of beam reinforcement anchorage on their seismic behaviour. Six full-scale exterior beam-column joints were constructed and tested to failure under reversal cyclic loading.Test results showed that the presence of lateral beams significantly increased the shear capacity of the joints. Moreover, replacing bent bars with headed-end bars resulted in more ductile behaviour of the joints.iii

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Although structures made of concrete reinforced with fiber-reinforced polymers (FRP) have shown promising performance under gravity loads, their performance under cyclic loading is still one of the main concerns. Although the linear nature of FRP reinforcement could be advantageous in terms of limiting the residual damage after an earthquake event, it lowers the energy dissipation of the structure, which can compromise its seismic performance. In this research, adding steel plates at selected locations in moment-resisting frames is proposed as a solution to improve seismic performance of FRP-reinforced concrete (FRP-RC) structures. Three full-scale cantilever beams, one steel-RC, one FRP-RC, and one FRP-RC with proposed steel plates, were constructed and tested under reversed cyclic loading. The results indicated that the proposed mechanism effectively improves the seismic performance of FRP-RC beams by increasing their initial stiffness and energy dissipation. Moreover, a computer simulation, using the moment–curvature determination process, was conducted to calculate bending moment capacity of FRP-RC beams with steel plates.