A Comparison Study of Direct Impact Analysis of Vehicle to Concrete Pier and In-Direct Impact Analysis using Load-Time History Functions

Abstract

Abstract In design standards such as AASHTO LRFD and Korea Highway Bridge Design, the dynamic behaviors under the impact loading has not been considered and it recommends of using a static force for designing bridge column against vehicle collisions. Accordingly, in this study, models of vehicle collisions to concrete bridge column were developed with various boundary conditions in order to take into account dynamic behaviour of the column. Cargo trucks of 10tons, 16tons and 38tons were selected and a typical type of concrete bridge pier column along the Kyungbu highway in Korea was selected for this study. Results from this study indicate that the static load specified in the design standards are too small compared to results obtained in this study. It was also found that a consideration of the bridge superstructure allowed smaller damages of concrete bridge pier column under truck impact loadings. Furthermore, a comparison study of direct impact analysis of vehicle to bridge-column with in-direct impact analysis using load-time history functions was performed. The in-direct impact analysis shows that the use of load-time history graph improves the computational cost up to 92% and predict the behaviors of the bridge column under the impact loadings well. The obtained load-time history graph could be easily applied to several existing models.