Ten Years of Experiments on Bridges Using Resilient Damage-Resistant Systems and Accelerated Construction Techniques

摘要

Past earthquakes such as the Christchurch and Kaikoura events have highlighted the difficulties in residual capacity assessment and repair of plastic hinge damage in conventional reinforced concrete bridges. Also, with growing population densities in urban centres around the world, there is substantial interest in increasing earthquake resilience and minimising the disruption caused by new bridge construction. Two areas of research that address these aspects are low damage design and accelerated bridge construction. The aims of low damage design are to significantly reduce seismically induced damage to structural members, minimise residual drifts and limit damage to specifically designed components. At the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, within the bridge engineering space over the past decade or so, particular focus has been placed on these areas of research and their combination. This paper presents an overview of the extensive experimental work undertaken at the University of Canterbury on these topics for bridges.