Study on Repaired Earthquake-Damaged Bridge Piers under Seismic Load

Abstract

The concrete bridge pier damaged during earthquakes need be repaired to meet the design standards. Steel tube as a traditional material or FRP as a novel material has become popular to repair the damaged reinforced concrete (RC) bridge piers. In this paper, experimental and finite element (FE) studies are employed to analyze the confinement effectiveness of the different repair materials. The FE method was used to calculate the hysteretic behavior of three predamaged circle RC bridge piers repaired with steel tube, basalt fiber reinforced polymer (BFRP), and carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP), respectively. Meanwhile, the repaired predamaged circle concrete bridge piers were tested by pseudo-static cyclic loading to study the seismic behavior and evaluate the confinement effectiveness of the different repair materials and techniques. The FE analysis and experimental results showed that the repaired piers had similar hysteretic curves with the original specimens and all the three repair techniques can restore the seismic performance of the earthquake-damaged piers. Steel tube jacketing can significantly improve the lateral stiffness and peak load of the damaged pier, while the BFRP and CFRP sheets cannot improve these properties due to their thin thickness.