Seismic Performance Goals and Probabilistic Assessment of Expansion Joints for Highway Bridges

Seismic specifications acknowledge the need for post-event functionality for essential and critical bridges, either explicitly or implicitly, in terms of structural seismic performance. A move towards performance based design and assessment of bridges and their components necessitates the ability to evaluate the likelihood of achieving a given set of performance goals within a level of confidence. However, these strategic performance goals for seismic expansion joints in bridges have yet to be adequately defined and little research has considered the influence and performance of seismic expansion joints on the post-event functionality of bridge systems. Uncertainties in the ground shaking, seismic demand, and capacity must be characterized in order to assess the potential for damage to the joints themselves and their effect on the failure potential for the overall bridge system. Additionally, the states of damage evaluated should have links to anticipated functionality of the bridge in order to investigate how joint selection ultimately affects bridge functionality. This paper proposes a framework for reliability assessment of seismic expansion joints through the development of seismic fragility curves. Damage due to pounding in non-seismic joints and engineered seismic expansion joints are compared probabilistically. The curves can be used to evaluate the reliability of different expansion joints, as well as the influence of the joints on the bridge performance as a whole including anticipated allowable traffic carrying capacity.

• Corporate Authors:

  Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research

  State University of New York, 107 Red Jacket Quadrangle, P.O. Box 610025
  Buffalo, NY  United States  14261-0025
• Authors:
  • Padgett, Jamie E
  • DesRoches, Reginald
  • Bradford, Paul
• Conference:
  • Sixth National Seismic Conference on Bridges and Highways
  • Location: Charleston SC, United States
  • Date: 2008-7-28 to 2008-7-30
• Publication Date: 2008

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; Photos; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 10p
• Monograph Title: Sixth National Seismic Conference on Bridges and Highways: Seismic Technologies for Extreme Loads

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Bearing capacity; Expansion joints; Failure; Highway bridges; Performance based specifications; Seismicity
• Uncontrolled Terms: Fragility curves
• Subject Areas: Bridges and other structures; Highways; I24: Design of Bridges and Retaining Walls;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01356919
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Nov 16 2011 2:51PM