United States Department of Transportation
i
Seismic Performance of Stone Masonry and Unreinforced Concrete Railroad Bridge Piers
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2020-01-09
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[PDF-3.07 MB]
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Abstract:Numerous railroad bridge structures in the United States were constructed more than 100 years ago. With railroad infrastructure aging quickly, there is a push to reuse existing substructures while replacing entire superstructures. Often, these substructures are unreinforced concrete (URC) or unreinforced masonry (URM). In order for these URC or URM elements to be accepted for an extended design life, they must be evaluated for their ability to withstand seismic loading. The research objective of this project is to investigate the mechanism of the behavior, especially failure modes, of the URM and URC piers that are subject to earthquake loads and propose mitigation or retrofit methods for these types of structures. Compared to highway bridges, railroad bridges typically have better seismic performance. The track system is considered a contributor to this better performance because it can act as a restraint against horizontal movement of the superstructure during earthquakes. Based on the observation on the URC and URM railroad bridge piers in previous earthquakes, the authors find that the behavior of this type of pier is prone to include sliding and rocking, which are typical rigid body motions. Thus, this study proposes to simplify the railroad piers into a single-body or into stacked multi-body rigid block systems with a horizontal restraint at the top and understand the behavior of this type of system when subjected to various ground motions.
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