Effect of structural parameters on probability of failure of piers in seismic isolated concrete bridges

Bridges are a critical part of the urban and suburban transportation network, so they are supposed to be designed to sustain earthquake induced damages to be utilized after earthquake. Various parameters can affect the behavior and probability of failure of a bridge and the present work aims to evaluate the effects of changes in structural parameters on the probability of failure in isolated concrete bridges OpenSees software is used for simulating and analyzing 16 different bridge models. Incremental dynamic analysis is conducted using this software and IDA and fragility curves of models are derived and presented. The results show that the probability of failure decreases with the increase of the pier diameter, concrete compressive strength, yield strength of longitudinal rebars and diameter of longitudinal bars. Also increasing the stiffness of elastic isolator and decreasing confined diameter of pier results in increasing the probability of failure. Furthermore, results show that, the probability of failure is more sensitive on the variation of pier confined diameter, yield strength of longitudinal rebars, diameter of longitudinal bars and the stiffness of elastic isolators in comparison with the variation of concrete compressive strength.