Abstract: According to the damage characteristics of steel reinforced recycled concrete columns and the material properties of recycled concrete, by means of the elastoplastic theory of a plate, the minimum cover thickness at which the instability does not occur in the compression zone of a steel reinforced recycled concrete column was theoretically analyzed in this paper. Meanwhile, from the view of recycled concrete cover cracking, according to the force diffusion theory and a tensile damage model, the calculation method of cracking cover thickness for a steel reinforced recycled concrete column was analyzed. It is shown that the cover thickness of a steel reinforced recycled concrete column is dependent on the recycled concrete strength grades, column high of steel reinforced recycled concrete, steel flange width, replacement rate of recycled aggregate.