Performance-Based Seismic Design of Concrete Bridges

A performance-based design (PBD) procedure, initially proposed for the seismic design of buildings, is tailored herein to the structural configurations commonly adopted in bridges. It aims at the efficient design of bridges for multiple performance levels (PLs), while achieving control over a broad range of design parameters (i.e. strains, deformations, ductility factors) most of which are directly estimated at the design stage using advanced analysis tools. To evaluate the efficiency of the proposed design methodology, it is applied to an actual bridge that was designed according to ‘standard’ European practice; assessment of the proposed method using nonlinear dynamic analysis for a set of spectrum-compatible motions and comparison with the ‘standard’ design (Code-BD) reveals enhanced seismic performance and cost reduction, albeit at the expense of increased computational effort.