ABSTRACT

ABSTRACT: Seismic fragility reflects the ability of a structure to withstand future seismic demands. It is defined as the conditional probability that a structural demand quantity attains or exceeds a specified capacity level of the bridge for given the characteristics of an earthquake. In order to obtain an accurate assessment of the fragility of a bridge, it is critical to incorporate information about the current structural properties, which reflects the possible aging and deterioration. This paper describes a probabilistic framework to identify the actual conditions of reinforced concrete (RC) bridges in the field using nondestructive testing (NDT) and to develop the corresponding fragility estimates for the bridge.