Performance Based Earthquake Engineering applied to composite bridges with short and medium spans and concrete cross beams

The seismic resistance is significant for the safety assessment and life-cycle performance of bridges in earthquake areas. Therefore focus needs to be put on the seismic behavior of bridges, in particular of the irdetailing. Concrete cross beams are an economic alternative to welded and bolted joints in composite bridges with small and medium spans. However proof of their seismic resistance was lacking. To allow for the benefits from concrete cross beams for bridges in seismic areas, an experimental test campaign was designed in the frame of an European RFCS research project with the aim to investigate in the structural response of these solutions subjected to seismic loading. In addition, a vulnerability analysis was carried out on short-medium span steel-concrete composite I-girder bridges. On the basis of a case study, the systematic development of the Performance - Based Earthquake engineering (PBEE) for this kind of composite bridges including seismic input randomness, demand and damage analysis as well as economic cost-benefit estimations has been developed. In particular, the definition of proper EDPs (Engineering Demand Parameters) is investigated through a non-linear numerical model of the bridge, which is developed in OpenSEES environment and analyzed using Incremental Dynamic Analysis (IDA) technique.