Seismic Analysis of a PSC I Girder Bridge Using Nonlinear Static Method

Abstract

This paper presents a seismic analysis of three spanned Prestressed Concrete (PSC) I girder bridge, which is known for having a high load-bearing capacity and high flexural resistance. Bridge modeling is done in MIDAS Civil software. MIDAS Civil is a recently developed finite element-based software, exclusively for bridge modeling and well known for its user-friendly interface. A case study was carried on a 36.7 m of three spanned prestressed I girder bridge which consists of 4 numbers of Pre-Cast Post Tensioned-I Girder of 35.7 m long, under seismic Zone-II and is rested on hard soil strata. Loading on the superstructure is assigned as per IRC:6-2017. The entire work is divided into two phases; in the first phase, a three-dimension model of the bridge has been subjected to the linear dynamic method (response spectrum method) to obtain the displacement demand of the bridge. In the second phase, the nonlinear static method (push-over analysis) has been performed as per ACT 40 and FEMA 440. The displacement capacity results from the push-over analysis are used for carrying out seismic performance evaluation of a bridge. After analysis, the seismic response of a bridge is found out in terms of base shear and displacements. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.