Reinforced concrete (RC) buildings designed during the ‘60s and ‘70s are rather common in Italy. They are often utilised for strategic purposes, such as schools or hospitals. Those buildings are vulnerable to seismic events due to several possible reasons (i.e., low ductility at both local and global levels, insufficient strength against brittle mechanisms, strong degradation of the resisting members under cyclic actions, and so on).

The studies about the seismic vulnerability of structures have intensified in the last two decades by considering the damage observed after the recent earthquakes of Assisi (1996), Molise (2002) and L'Aquila (2009). The reports of damages observed on existing structures pointed out the key importance of beam-to-column joints on the global performance of RC structures.

In the last four decades, several theoretical and analytical models have been formulated for evaluating the shear strength of beam-to-column joints under seismic actions. In particular, plenty of experimental tests have been performed on exterior beam-to-column sub-assemblages with the aim of studying their behaviour under monotonic and cyclic loads.

A review of the most significant contributions currently available in the scientific literature for evaluating the shear strength of interior RC joint, is firstly presented in the paper. Besides, the discussion about the analytical shape of those models, the focus of the report is on the main parameters generally considered in the various proposals.

A wide database collecting the results of 176 tests carried out in the last thirty years and available in the scientific literature has been assembled by the Authors and outlined in the present paper. The results collected in such a database are then utilised for assessing both accuracy and reliability of the various models mentioned above.

Finally, further calibrations are presented for enhancing both accuracy and reliability of some of the theoretical models mentioned in the previous sections.