Techno Press
You logged in as Techno Press

Earthquakes and Structures
  Volume 22, Number 5, May 2022 , pages 503-515
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12989/eas.2022.22.5.503
 


Seismic fragility curves for a concrete bridge using structural health monitoring and digital twins
Norberto Rojas-Mercedes, Kalil Erazo and Luigi Di Sarno

 
Abstract
    This paper presents the development of seismic fragility curves for a precast reinforced concrete bridge instrumented with a structural health monitoring (SHM) system. The bridge is located near an active seismic fault in the Dominican Republic (DR) and provides the only access to several local communities in the aftermath of a potential damaging earthquake; moreover, the sample bridge was designed with outdated building codes and uses structural detailing not adequate for structures in seismic regions. The bridge was instrumented with an SHM system to extract information about its state of structural integrity and estimate its seismic performance. The data obtained from the SHM system is integrated with structural models to develop a set of fragility curves to be used as a quantitative measure of the expected damage; the fragility curves provide an estimate of the probability that the structure will exceed different damage limit states as a function of an earthquake intensity measure. To obtain the fragility curves a digital twin of the bridge is developed combining a computational finite element model and the information extracted from the SHM system. The digital twin is used as a response prediction tool that minimizes modeling uncertainty, significantly improving the predicting capability of the model and the accuracy of the fragility curves. The digital twin was used to perform a nonlinear incremental dynamic analysis (IDA) with selected ground motions that are consistent with the seismic fault and site characteristics. The fragility curves show that for the maximum expected acceleration (with a 2% probability of exceedance in 50 years) the structure has a 62% probability of undergoing extensive damage. This is the first study presenting fragility curves for civil infrastructure in the DR and the proposed methodology can be extended to other structures to support disaster mitigation and post-disaster decision-making strategies.
 
Key Words
    civil infrastructure; digital twins; earthquake engineering; fragility curves; structural health monitoring
 
Address
Norberto Rojas-Mercedes:School of Engineering, Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo (INTEC), Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

Kalil Erazo:1)School of Engineering, Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo (INTEC), Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
2)Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Rice University, Houston, Texas, USA

Luigi Di Sarno:
 

Techno-Press: Publishers of international journals and conference proceedings.       Copyright © 2024 Techno Press
P.O. Box 33, Yuseong, Daejeon 305-600 Korea, Tel: +82-42-828-7996, Fax : +82-42-828-7997, Email: admin@techno-press.com