Scaling Factors Quantifying Seismic Load Uncertainty with Soil Nonlinearity Effect in Displacement-Based Design of Bridge Abutments
Publication: Journal of Bridge Engineering
Volume 27, Issue 11
Abstract
The displacement-based design methods for bridge abutments, essentially cantilever retaining walls, require an input of expected ground motion on-site. For major projects, these motions are obtained based on site-specific response studies. In other projects, it is merely a guess based on the PGA values prescribed in the design codes. Further, the seismic displacements in retaining walls are usually estimated using simplified rigid–plastic analytical models. These models do not account for the effect of soil nonlinearity, alteration of input signal due to soil–structure interaction, amplification effects, or material damping. The currently followed seismic load factor of 1 on the prescribed PGA does not account for the induced uncertainties for the reasons given here, which can often be unconservative and lead to failure. This study statistically quantifies the effect of these uncertainties and proposes scaling factors on the design PGA of the input motion to estimate more reliable seismic displacements accounting for the assumptions in the simplified rigid–plastic model. The nonlinear finite-element analysis of retaining wall in OpenSees has been compared with the analytical double-wedge model considering a realistic V-shaped mechanism in backfill. It includes analysis for 83 different cases of earthquake motions scaled to four different PGAs. Finally, the scaling factors are proposed to estimate residual as well as peak sliding and in-plane rotational displacements of cantilever retaining walls with and without shear key.
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Acknowledgments
Financial support from IIT Gandhinagar is gratefully acknowledged. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions related to this research article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of IIT Gandhinagar.
Notation
The following symbols are used in this paper:
- COV
- coefficient of variation;
- amax
- peak ground acceleration;
- f
- scaling factor;
- W
- weight of wall with locked soil mass;
- Ws
- weight of soil wedge;
- δ
- interface friction angle between wall and soil;
- γ
- load factor;
- ησ
- constant representing the number of standard deviations required to obtained desired probability of exceedance;
- λ
- mean of bias of load;
- ϕ
- angle of shearing resistance;
- θ1
- angle of inclination of inner rupture plane with horizontal; and
- θ2
- angle of inclination of inner rupture plane with vertical.
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Published In
Journal of Bridge Engineering
Volume 27 • Issue 11 • November 2022
Copyright
© 2022 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Oct 11, 2021
Accepted: Jul 14, 2022
Published online: Sep 15, 2022
Published in print: Nov 1, 2022
Discussion open until: Feb 15, 2023
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