Aftershock Fragility Assessment of Continuous RC Girder Bridges Using a Modified Damage Index

Aftershock fragility is usually calculated conditioned on a range of potential post-mainshock damage states. The post-mainshock damage can be identified using damage indices, the latter being frequently associated with displacement-based parameters such as the maximum drift ratio or the residual displacement. However, when the reliable simulation of a structural system in a specific post-mainshock damage state is the objective of a numerical study, using such damage indicators may not assure the structure experiencing a homogeneous level of damage due to different mainshocks characteristics, which induce the aftershock fragility results unreliable. Along these lines, the current study presents a damage evaluation methodology mainly used for aftershock fragility assessment. It aims to reduce the variation of damage levels derived by using different mainshock seismic motions. The methodology presented herein includes: (i) the introduction of a damage index defined by comparing the monotonic pushover curve of the intact and post-earthquake damaged structure; (ii) the description of a finite element (FE)-based scheme that enables to quantify of the proposed damage index; and (iii) a deterioration-related modeling technique that can capture both strength and stiffness degrading performance of structural systems exposed to earthquake-induced excitations. The latter is essential to support the FE-based quantification scheme for the damage index. This methodology evaluation methodology can be primarily used for calculating the aftershock fragility assessment for a multi-span RC continuous girder bridge. The back-to-back incremental dynamic analysis framework uses a larger number of mainshock-aftershock artificial sequences to generate the aftershock fragility curves. The AS fragility results obtained via MBDI are compared with that via maximum drift ratio in terms of the ability to reduce the variation of residual capacities obtained using different mainshocks to induce a specific damage state but collapse by the same aftershock. The comparison shows a more robust relationship of MBDI with the residual capacity. It is found that MBDI, as well as its quantification approach proposed in this study, is a more effective damage predictor than the widely used displacement-based indices for AS fragility assessment.

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