Seismic fragility assessment of typical bridges in Northeastern Brazil

Abstract

This paper presents a seismic fragility assessment of bridges commonly found in Northeastern Brazil. A generic three-dimensional nonlinear finite-element model is generated in OpenSees to enable variation of geometric features and component modeling. A parametric analysis is performed to evaluate the impact of the geometric and physical variations of the bridge inventory on the seismic behavior of the structures. Nonlinear time-history analyses using four sets of natural earthquake records are performed to obtain the Probabilistic Seismic Demand Model for the bridges. Capacity models are adopted according to previous studies to be combined with demand models to generate fragility functions. This article helps the decision markers to predict the seismic behavior of typical bridges in Northeastern Brazil, which enables the evaluation of risk mitigation methods.

Keywords
seismic demand; fragility functions; parametric analysis; earthquake engineering; vulnerability assessment

Graphical Abstract