Quantifying Material Uncertainty in Seismic Evaluations of Reinforced Concrete Bridge Column Structures

Published

May 1, 2022

Author(s)

Christopher Segura, Siamak Sattar, Mohammadamin Hariri Ardebili

Abstract

In seismic performance evaluations, the force-deformation response of a structure is typically assessed using a deterministic analytical model, and inherent uncertainty is often neglected. For reinforced concrete structures, a source of uncertainty is variability in the mechanical properties of reinforcing steel and concrete (i.e., material uncertainty). This paper presents an analytical investigation to quantify the impact of the statistical variability in mechanical properties of ASTM A706 Grade 60, 80 and 100 reinforcing steel and normal weight concrete on the seismic response of reinforced concrete bridge columns. The effects on the drift response, expressed by the Coefficient of Variation (COV), range between COV values of 0.1, for low-to-moderate ductility demands (i.e., drift ratio < 5%), and 0.3, for larger ductility demands. The COV of the force demand is lower, ranging between 0.05 and 0.1. Overall, the study shows that material uncertainty can be incorporated in seismic performance assessments through few additional analyses.

Citation

Aci Structural Journal

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.14359/51734486

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Keywords

uncertainty, materials, performance-based earthquake engineering, seismic assessment, reinforced concrete, endurance time analysis, Latin Hypercube Sampling

Citation

Segura, C. , Sattar, S. and Hariri Ardebili, M. (2022), Quantifying Material Uncertainty in Seismic Evaluations of Reinforced Concrete Bridge Column Structures, Aci Structural Journal, [online], https://doi.org/10.14359/51734486, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=931058 (Accessed April 28, 2026)

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