• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.455-480
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• 2015

In the last decade, displacement-based (DB) methods have become established design procedures for reinforced concrete (RC) structures. They use strain and displacement measures as seismic performance control parameters. As for other simplified seismic design methods, it is of great interest to prove if they are usually conservative in respect to more refined, nonlinear, time history analyses, and can estimate design parameters with acceptable accuracy. In this paper, the current Direct Displacement-Based Design (DDBD) procedure is evaluated for designing simple single degree of freedom (SDOF) systems with specific reference to simply supported RC bridge piers. Using different formulations proposed in literature for the equivalent viscous damping and spectrum reduction factor, a parametric study is carried out on a comprehensive set of SDOF systems, and an average error chart of the method is derived allowing prediction of the expected error for an ample range of design cases. Following the chart, it can be observed that, for the design of actual RC bridge piers, underestimation errors of the DDBD method are very low, while the overestimation range of the simplified displacement-based procedure is strongly dependent on design ductility.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.21-32
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• 2004

A Seismic analysis procedure of bi-directional brideg motions is developed by using mechanical bridge model. A three-dimensional mechanical model can consider major phenomena under bi-directional seismic excitations, such as nonlinear pier motion under biaxial bending, pounding and bearing damage due to the rotaion of the superstructure, etc. The analyses utilizing the uni-directional and the bi-directional bridge model for the 3-span simply supported bridge are then performed. The seismic responses in two cases are examined and compared by investigating the relative displacements of each superstructure to both ground and adjacent superstructures and the restoring forces of RC pier. The analysis using either the uni-directional model or bi-directional model is acceptable for estimating the displacement responses of a bridge, but the bi-directional analysis is found to give more conservative results for resisting forces of RC piers. To make general conclusions, therefore, the analysis using the bi-directional bridge model should be performed in evaluating the seismic safety of bridges.