Bridges with abutment restraint: probabilistic seismic response assessment

One of the major challenges in Performance-Based Earthquake Engineering is the definition and the incorporation of all the sources of uncertainty which play a role in the risk assessment of structural systems subjected to the earthquake excitation, including the uncertainty affecting system properties (model parameters uncertainty). This paper investigates the effects of model parameters uncertainty on the seismic response of a steel-concrete composite bridge with dissipative piers and with deck transverse motion restrained at the abutments. Monte Carlo simulation with Latin Hypercube sampling and incremental dynamic analysis are employed to propagate the effects of this uncertainty through the response assessment of the finite element model of the bridge. Based on the results of the analyses, a simplified procedure is proposed for incorporating the effects of this uncertainty which reduces significantly the computational cost of the simulation.