In recent years, different damage indexes have been introduced in engineering literature. The most prominent one among other
counterparts is the 1985 Park and Ang's damage index (DIPA), which demonstrates well calibration against experimental
results. Hence, it has traditionally had broad application in the field of structural engineering. Commonly, in DIPA relevant
parameters are assessed based on plastic-hinge approach, which is not well suited to consider the coupled response between
stress resultants (axial force and flexural moment) especially in grossly nonlinear domain. The reason is that named approach
is utilized constant shape plastic moment-curvature curve, which is not capable of varying the shape throughout loading history.
Another drawback of plastic-hinge method is the difficulty of representing precisely partial yielding of the cross-section. To
remedy the situation, the fiber discretization technique is used in this paper. Based on the fiber discretization strategy, not only
have the stiffness and strength degradation been characterized more accurately, but also the distribution of plasticity along the
plastic zone has been considered. Besides, the multi-directional effect of axial force and flexural moment is considered to assess
DI parameters. Additionally, this strategy directly incorporates the effect of transverse confinement into cross sectional
constitutive behaviour.