A new damage-control target displacement procedure for direct displacement-based design of circular reinforced concrete bridge pier

Abstract

In this paper, a new perspective procedure to determine the damage-control target displacement for circular reinforced concrete (RC) bridge pier is proposed by considering the new approach of damage-control limit states (DCLS). The new approach of DCLS is explored by integrating existing damage-control concrete strain limit with recently proposed damage-control reinforcement strain limit. Modification of yield displacement and modified plastic-hinge along with new DCLS is used to estimate the damage-control target displacement for a circular RC bridge pier. Three-dimensional (3D) finite element (FE) model has been developed to validate the damage-control target displacement subject to ground motion based on a nonlinear time-history (NLTH) analysis. The 3D FE model is updated to achieve a reasonable relationship between numerical, analytical, and outcomes found in the literature. It is worth noting that the proposed procedure manages to estimate an improved damage-control target displacement for 7.0 m, 11.0 m and 13.0 m height of circular RC bridge pier. The influence of new reinforcement limit strain along with both modification of yield displacement and plastic-hinge contributes to providing better results. The result shows that new DCLS were efficient to predict damage-control target displacement, consistent with FE analysis result.