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Proceedings of the International Conference on
Advances and New Challenges in Earthquake
Engineering Research, Hong Kong Volume
SEISMIC SIMULATION OF PRESTRESSED CONCRETE
BRIDGES
Chyuan-Hwan Jeng, Y.L. Mo and Thomas T.C. Hsu
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Houston
Houston, Texas, USA
ABSTRACT
There are three mam subjects m this research: finite fiber element analysis (FFEA)
for reinforced concrete and prstressed concrete (RC/PC) frame structures, application of
artificial neural networks (ANN) to seismic evaluation of prestressed concrete (PC)
bridges, and development of finite-element (FE) software using object-onented
programming (OOP), By employing force-based FFEA, nonlinear static and dynamic
analyses of RC/PC frame structures were studied with investgation into the effect of the
material constitutive models on the FFEA analysis and the solution algorithm of the
FFEA procedures. Multiplayer perceptron networks (MLP) were applied to model the
earthquake excitation - cntical structural response of PC bridges based on the database
constructed from the analytical results of the FFEA. An augmented form of MLP was
proposed to improve the modeling accuracy of the classical MLP.
INTRODUCTION
It is well known that reinforced concrete (RC) structures designed according to
current design codes will respond inelastically to the maximum expected earthquake. The
capability of RC structures to resist earthquake attacks relies heavily upon the nonlinear
load-carrying capacity demanded implicitly by design codes through such indices as
ductility and formation of plastic hinges. The majority of the seismic energy imparted on
an RC structure is dissipated by these nonlinear mechanisms, and the proposition of
contemporary structural engineering that structures are allowed to be moderately
damaged without collapse under severe earthquake attacks is thus assured.
This paper presents the study and applications of state-of-the-art finite element (FE)
analysis of reinforced concrete (RC) and prestressed concrete (PC) frame structures and
the investigation of the effect of material constitutive models on fee FE analysis. The
objective was to accomplish a complete set of finite element software for nonlinear
analysis of RC/PC frame structures subjected to cyclic static load or earthquake