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Multivariate analysis of regular and irregular RC bridges and characterization of earthquake behaviour according to stiffness-based indexes

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Abstract

Seismic design of bridges in some respects is more complex than other structures especially due to, in some cases, the a priori unknown shape of the displacement profile of the structure. Bridges of irregular nature and of a certain length can have transversal horizontal displacement profiles (THDP) of the deck that are very dependent on higher frequency modes. Furthermore, the THDP might change significantly during the earthquake action, due to loss of stiffness of some elements rather than others. This makes most nonlinear static pushover methods inaccurate and introduces difficulties in the seismic design of these structures. In this study, several RC bridges which vary in length and irregularity, are analysed with nonlinear dynamic analysis and optimized via genetic algorithms with performance and cost as objectives in the longitudinal and transversal directions separately. The optimized solutions are analysed in terms of their effective stiffness and compared with each other. The results show correlation between the displacement of the stiffer piers and the overall effective stiffness of the structure. This correlation is closely linked to other parameters such as the relative stiffness index. The results and the parameters allow to identify cases in which the bridges develop “long bridge behaviour” in the THDP of the bridge, and also in which situations the longitudinal and transversal peak displacement of critical piers are similar, which is useful knowledge to optimize seismic design in terms of cost and performance. Practical recommendations for the optimization of the seismic design of irregular bridges are offered.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge CERis/DECivil from IST for all the support

Funding

Vítor T. Camacho received a grant [Grant number PD/BD/127802/2016] from Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering, CERIS, Instituto Superior Técnico, Av. Rovisco Pais nº1, 1049-001, Lisbon, Portugal

    Vítor T. Camacho, Mário Lopes & Carlos S. Oliveira

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  1. Vítor T. Camacho
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  2. Mário Lopes
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  3. Carlos S. Oliveira
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Correspondence to Vítor T. Camacho.

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Appendix

Appendix

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Table 5 Case-studies for optimization: LBridge–bridge length; Dir–Direction (Longitudinal-L, Transversal-T); Irreg- Irregularity profile; ADeck–area of the deck cross-section; EQsf–earthquake scale factor; Pier Length–Length of each pier along the bridge (associated to irregularity profile)
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Table 6 Results for case-study 480_R_L5_A12_EQ1_T relative to the Pareto set solutions
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6.

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Camacho, V.T., Lopes, M. & Oliveira, C.S. Multivariate analysis of regular and irregular RC bridges and characterization of earthquake behaviour according to stiffness-based indexes. Bull Earthquake Eng 20, 415–448 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10518-021-01223-9

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