Determining the Capacity of Deteriorated Reinforced Concrete Bridge Structures Under Seismic Loading

Determining the Capacity of Deteriorated Reinforced Concrete Bridge Structures Under Seismic Loading
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 50
Release: 2013
Genre: Dissertations, Academic
ISBN:

With the continual deterioration of the US infrastructures, the matter of safety is consistently in question. Records show that 80% of the entire US transportation infrastructure, such as bridges, roads, railways, etc. is either deficient or functionally obsolete. This thesis focuses specifically on the seismic capacity and demand of bridge structures at different levels of deterioration that may occur over time. This thesis also relates the design demand and capacity of the original and deteriorated bridges. The purpose is to show that the existing conditions of deteriorated bridges are more critical under earthquake loading than expected. A simple bridge design was constructed using design guidelines from Caltrans. Accelerograms were taken from recorded earthquakes within the state of California. The model was developed in SAP2000 and nonlinear time-history analyses where performed for multiple earthquake motions to demonstrate the demand and the capacity of the bridge. Deterioration was predetermined as a 10, 25, and 50 percent reduction in the diameter of the longitudinal reinforcement bars and therefore, 15, 37.5, and 75 percent reduction in the diameter of the lateral reinforcement bars. The results did confirm that with deterioration, even as little as ten percent, the bridge was no longer able to provide the displacement capacity that it was originally designed for and failed when the displacement demands were larger than this reduced capacity. Current methods utilize only dead and live loads to determine the maximum load-carrying capacity of a structure; deterioration is not explicitly accounted for. The contribution of this thesis is a set of first-of-a-kind nonlinear time-history analyses that examine the two dimensional behavior of columns at critical sections, such that evaluation of the columns' reduction in rotation capacity due to deterioration under seismic loading can be formalized.

Highway Research

Highway Research
Author: Institution of Civil Engineers (Great Britain)
Publisher: Thomas Telford
Total Pages: 468
Release: 1991
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9780727716354

The level of research activity in the highway sector as a whole has declined precipitously in recent decades, whilst the challenges facing US state highway agencies have escalated. As a result, a Strategic Highway Research Program - SHRP) was initiated to establish collaboration with research bodies tackling similar highway problems in countries worldwide. This collection of reports from around the world presents SHRP`s progress towards providing research-based new products from which the international highway engineering community may benefit. SHRP concentrates on six high-priority research areas: asphaltic materials; pavement performance; cement and concrete; maintenance cost effectiveness; concrete bridge component protection systems and the chemical control of snow and ice.