Seismic Fragility of Continuous Steel Highway Bridges in New York State
Publication: Journal of Bridge Engineering
Volume 12, Issue 6
Abstract
This paper presents the results of an analytical seismic fragility analysis of a typical steel highway bridge in New York State. The structural type and topological layout of this multispan I-girder bridge have been identified to be most typical of continuous bridges in New York State. The structural details of the bridge are designed as per New York State bridge design guidelines. Uncertainties associated with the estimation of material strength, bridge mass, friction coefficient of expansion bearings, and expansion-joint gap size are considered. To account for the uncertainties related to the bridge structural properties and earthquake characteristics, ten statistical bridge samples are established using the Latin Hypercube sampling and restricted pairing approach, and 100 ground motions are simulated numerically. The uncertainties of capacity and demand are estimated simultaneously by using the ratios of demands to capacities at different limit states to construct seismic fragility curves as a function of peak ground acceleration and fragility surfaces as a function of moment magnitude and epicentral distance for individual components using nonlinear and multivariate regressions. It has been observed that nonlinear and multivariate regressions show better fit to bridge response data than linear regression conventionally used. To account for seismic risk from multiple failure modes, second-order reliability yields narrower bounds than the commonly used first-order reliability method. The fragility curves and surfaces obtained from this analysis demonstrate that bridges in New York State have reasonably low likelihood of collapse during expected earthquakes.
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Acknowledgments
This research presented in this paper has been supported through NSF Grant No. NSFCMS 0099895 and U.S. Department of Transportation through Region II University Transportation Research Consortium. Any opinion expressed in this paper are those of the writers and do not reflect the opinions of sponsoring agencies. Discussions and comments by Dr. Sreenivas Alampalli, Director, Bridge Program and Evaluation Service Bureau, New York State Department of Transportation, and Dr. Mohammed Ettouney, Principal, Weidlinger Associates, New York, during the course of this research are sincerely acknowledged.
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Information
Published In
Journal of Bridge Engineering
Volume 12 • Issue 6 • November 2007
Pages: 689 - 699
Copyright
© 2007 ASCE.
History
Received: Nov 21, 2005
Accepted: May 4, 2006
Published online: Nov 1, 2007
Published in print: Nov 2007
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