ABSTRACT: With the development of new structural materials including FRP (fiber reinforced polymer), glass, stainless steel, the performance of structures have a great change from the steel and the steel reinforced concrete structures. The conventional ductility index that describes the inelastic deformation capacity for the traditional materials cannot longer suit the structures with new materials. A new term, "deformability", has been proposed to extend the concept of the ductility. In this paper, more than ten existing definitions of performance indices for the flexural members are reviewed. A new concept that is design-aimed state is defined relative to ultimate failure state after carrying out analysis based on the comparison in term of concepts and methodologies of the reviewed indices. A new approach to achieve the uniform performance indices and to determine the design-aimed state is proposed also. A set of uniform performance indices, including the deformability index D, the strength index S, the deformation energy index Y and the overall performance index F are presented. The moment-curvature curve of five type of flexural members, including steel beam, steel-reinforced concrete beam, prestressed concrete beam, FRP bars reinforced concrete beam and all-FRP beam, are analyzed using the suggested indices. F-factor is suggested to determine the design-aimed point for all flexural members.
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