ABSTRACT
A state-of-the-art and practice of seismic design of bridges in Europe is presented. After a brief overview of the damage suffered by bridges in the most recent earthquakes, the problems related to special kinds of input motion and the consequent interaction with soil are discussed. The regularity of the response, in terms of uniform ductility demad, the appropriate application of capacity design principles, the relative merits of force and displacement based design methods, the role of nonlinear dynamic analysis, assessment and strengthening of existing bridges and finally isolation and energy dissipation using artificial devieces are the main topics addressed in the paper.
