Study on seismic strengthening of railway bridge pier with CFRP and concrete jackets

Abstract

Seismic strengthening is essential for existing bridge piers which are deficient to resist the earthquake. The concrete and CFRP jackets with a bottom-anchoring method are used to strengthen railway bridge piers with low reinforcement ratio. Quasi-static tests of scaled down model piers are performed to evaluate the seismic performance of the original and strengthened bridge pier. The fracture characteristics indicate that the vulnerable position of the railway bridge pier with low reinforcement ratio during earthquake is the pier-footing region and shows flexural failure mode. The force-displacement relationships show that the two strengthening techniques using CFRP and concrete jackets can both provide a significant improvement in loadcarrying capacity for railway bridge piers with low reinforcement ratio. It is clear that the bottom-anchoring method by using planted steel bars can guarantee the CFRP and concrete jackets to work jointly with original concrete piers Furthermore, it can be found that the use of CFRP jacket offers advantages over concrete jacket in improving the energy dissipation capacity under lateral cyclic loading. Therefore, the seismic strengthening techniques by the use of CFRP and concrete jackets provide alternative choices for the large numbers of existing railway bridge piers with low reinforcement ratio in China.