Probabilistic Damage Control Application: Implementation of Performance-Based Earthquake Engineering in Seismic Design of Highway Bridge Columns

Abstract

Probabilistic damage control application (PDCA), an implementation of performance-based earthquake engineering (PBEE), is a stochastic process to identify the possible distribution of modern bridge responses when subjected to various seismic events. The PDCA procedure adopts reliability analysis principles based on nonlinear time history analyses (NTHAs). This paper presents the PDCA study of conducting more than 4,000 NTHAs with ground motions scaled using three different methods at 10 bridge locations to confirm the distribution of the statistical parameters associated with various site characteristics and scaling methods. Findings from the study along with supplementary parametric studies are discussed in this paper. Details from one of the locations are presented as an example to demonstrate how to compute the probability of exceeding each damage state (DS) given an earthquake and the combined probabilities. Lastly, this paper introduces a total probability-based method to estimate the probability of exceeding a DS within a bridge lifespan.