Effect of Ground Motion Directionality on Fragility Characteristics of a Highway Bridge

It is difficult to incorporate multidimensional effect of the ground motion in the design and response analysis of structures. The motion trajectory in the corresponding multi-dimensional space results in time variant principal axes of the motion and defies any meaningful definition of directionality of the motion. However, it is desirable to consider the directionality of the ground motion in assessing the seismic damageability of bridges which are one of the most vulnerable components of highway transportation systems. This paper presents a practice-oriented procedure in which the structure can be designed to ensure the safety under single or a pair of independent orthogonal ground motions traveling horizontally with an arbitrary direction to structural axis. This procedure uses nonlinear time history analysis and accounts for the effect of directionality in the form of fragility curves. The word directionality used here is different from “directivity” used in seismology to mean a specific characteristic of seismic fault movement.

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