Numerical Simulation of Vehicle Collision with Reinforced Concrete Piers Protected by FRP-Foam Composites

摘要

The accidental vehicle collision has increasingly posed a threat to the existing reinforce concrete (RC) bridge pier. To reduce the damage of pier, appropriate measures to protect existing RC piers from this event should be developed. This study is intended to apply two types of protective techniques around piers to achieve this purpose. One is the full wrapping with fiber reinforced polymers (FRPs), and the other is to install a composite protective device with fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) skins and aluminum foam core. Finite element numerical simulations are carried out to investigate their effectiveness on the protection of piers against vehicle impacts. The numerical results show that the increase of layer number of FRP wraps significantly reduces the deflection of pier but has little influence on impact force, whereas the FRP-foam composite device can significantly reduce the impact force on piers and dissipate the kinetic energy of vehicle by the deformation of aluminum foam, and then mitigate the damage of piers. The increase in the thickness of aluminum foam has an obvious effect on those.