Abstract
Abstract The need for seismic retrofitting of bridges after severe earthquakes has become important in recent years. This study examines the seismic evaluation of concrete bents of highway bridges designed and implemented according to the 1990s regulations. Compared with the older codes, 1990s codes have more complex details for connections which are evaluated by experimental and numerical methods in this research. Significant improvement was observed in the behavior of the specimens designed with 1990s codes; however, this improvement is not enough as strength degradation was also reported in the inner cycles of the hysteresis curves. Therefore, seismic improvement was performed using performance levels. Results showed that in the connection zone, the longitudinal bar slippage occurs and the performance of connection is weak. In experimental phase, a specimen was constructed with external pre-stressing in a transverse direction for retrofitting. The level of improvement in behavior was also evaluated using parameters such as energy dissipation, performance levels and force-displacement curves.
Highlights
Earthquake can cause severe damage in bridges which leads to many human casualties and financial losses. This issue has led to a global effort by researchers to improve the seismic performance of the bridges (Zadeh and Saiidi, 2007) by updating the seismic design codes
It is proven that the bridges designed by the old codes would have an inappropriate seismic performance in an earthquake
Concrete frames were subjected to cyclic loading up until the ultimate capacity of the bars and complete failure of the concrete core were seen
Summary
Earthquake can cause severe damage in bridges which leads to many human casualties and financial losses. This issue has led to a global effort by researchers to improve the seismic performance of the bridges (Zadeh and Saiidi, 2007) by updating the seismic design codes. This is mainly because bridges designed by the old seismic codes were exposed to different types of damage in recent earthquakes in Japan, Turkey, United States, and Taiwan (Chen et al, 2005).
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