Prefabricated bridge columns have shown increasing demands over the past few years due to their advantages compared to conventional bridge columns. The reason for this interest is due to their appropriate performance against severe earthquakes (EQs), where they remain functional and repairable with lower amount of cracks and damage. However, there is some uncertainty on application of these kinds of bridge columns in high seismic areas mainly due to lack of knowledge on their behaviour against severe earthquake loading. Therefore, comprehensive design guidelines which consider nonlinearity and energy dissipation and recentring capacity of the post-tensioning (PT) segmental columns are necessary. In this study, continuous steel bars are incorporated as starters through the segments and footing foundation in order to increase the seismic energy absorption of PT segmental columns. The influences of different parameters such as the force level criteria for post-tensioning, steel jacketing and mild steel ratio and column aspect ratio (AR) are important factors which have to be appropriately selected in various design procedures, such as displacement-based design, in order to achieve desirable stiffness, strength, equivalent viscous damping and lateral seismic demand. In this study, the cyclic loading and ground motion excitations were numerically performed in order to evaluate the bridge column seismic demands. Guidelines for performance-based design and displacement-based design are proposed.
Part of the book: Earthquakes