Innovative Design and Materials for Seismic Resilient ABC

Earthquakes can happen in Washington State at any time, and past history indicates there may be substantial shifting of land during a seismic event. The State Department of Transportations manages approximately 18,500 highway lane miles and more than 3,600 bridges on the state’s highway system. One of the agencies objectives is to ensure that state highways will be able to provide emergency responders access to damaged portions of the community quickly to provide Recovery life-saving services. State Highways will also need to provide the capability for the state economy and the movement of freight and goods to be re- stored as quickly as possible.

In an earthquake, damage to infrastructure bridges is more closely related to ground motion rather than magnitude. In addition, the ground type can significantly influence ground acceleration. Base on the geographic area and historical data geologists are able to create seismic hazard maps which show likely earth- quake ground motion zones. This paper discusses the seismic design requirements for bridges and challenges to achieve these requirements for new and existing bridges.

In recent years the ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) has been tested for bridge columns to improve to improve the performance of the connection within the plastic hinging regions. UHPC with its superior properties of higher compressive strength and modulus, and very low permeability, can provide improvements over conventionally build bridge columns.