SEISMIC ASSESSMENT OF ARCH BRIDGE ACROSS SLJUNJICA RIVER IN SLUNJ

Marin FRANETOVI*, Jure RADI** & Zlatko AVOR*

*University of Zagreb, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Zagreb, Croatia **University of Zagreb, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Zagreb, Croatia and Institute IGH, Zagreb, Croatia Key words: Seismic assessment, existing bridge, reinforced concrete arch, 1960s design codes, nonlinear static pushover analysis, current European seismic design codes Abstract: This paper represents a successful structural work designed by prof. Kruno Tonkovi reinforced concrete arch bridge across Slunjica River in Slunj built in 1961. Main structural elements of this bridge are twin reinforced concrete arches with span of 72m and rise of 10m with solid cross sections 1.2m deep at arch abutments and only 0.85m at the arch crown. The bridge was designed and constructed according to 1960s design codes with no seismic actions taken into the account. According to the current Croatian seismological chart, peak ground acceleration at the location of the bridge is 0.12g. For this reason the bridge was assessed for seismic actions with nonlinear static pushover method and results were evaluated within demands defined by current European seismic design codes.

1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 Bridge across Slunjica River in Slunj Croatian National road D1 crosses Slunjica River at beautiful location of Rastoke in Slunj. In that extremely demanding area prof. Kruno Tonkovi designed an aesthetically pleasing arch bridge which represents a good example of harmony between landscape and structure (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Arch bridge across Slunjica River in Slunj The bridge was designed and constructed in 1961, according to 1960s design codes with no seismic actions taken into the account. According to the current Croatian seismological chart peak ground acceleration at the location of the bridge is 0.12g. For this reason the bridge was checked to seismic actions. 1.2 Seismic assessment analysis of existing bridges The purpose of carrying out a seismic assessment analysis of an existing bridge is to determine the level of risk associated with loss of serviceability, severe damage, or collapse. With this risk quantified, rational decisions can be made as to whether the bridge should be retrofitted or replaced, or to accept the risk and leave the bridge in the existing state. There are generally two stages to a seismic assessment. The first involves a general screening and prioritization study to determine which bridges are most likely to pose the greatest risk. The second stage involves a detailed structural analysis of the bridges identified as having high risk in the prioritization phase in relation to site seismicity and soil conditions4. In this paper the focus was at the second stage of a seismic assessment of bridge across Slunjica River in Slunj.

2. BRIDGE ESSENTIALS
Road alignment at the bridge lies in straight line in ground plan and the vertical alignment is in constant upward slope of 4% from abutment A1 to A12, some 14 meters above water level (Figure 2). The width of the two way lane is 8.0m with pedestrian sidewalks of 1.5m and total width of the superstructure of 11.0m. At the location of the bridge the foundation soil is sound limestone rock with good characteristics for supporting an arch bridge. The river bed is approximately 70m wide. Prof. Kruno Tonkovi considered that the most appropriate solution in those conditions was an arch bridge with 72m span supporting light deck superstructure with slender vertical columns.
A1 P2 P3 P4 P5 P6 P7 P8 P9 P10 P11 P12 A13 Slunj Karlovac

Figure 2: Longitudinal section of bridge across Slunjica River in Slunj After the selection of arch axis span of lax=72.61m arch rise was defined by position of the roadway and amounts for intrados fin=10m, for arch axis fax=9.91m and for extrados fex=9.82m. Arch shape is circular segment with radius of intrados Rin=69.8m, of arch axis Rax=71.47m and of extrados Rex=73.18m. Such selection of main arch shapes resulted in variable thickness of its solid cross section, 120cm at arch abutments and only 85 cm at arch crown (Figure 3).The arch is fixed rigidly to its abutments. In fact, main structural elements of this bridge are twin equal reinforced concrete arches. They are connected together with cross beams along arch segment near abutments at length of 8.15m and after that they continue as two stand-alone arches. Arches were constructed on wooden scaffolding in two phases. First bottom arch ring 45cm thick was concreted and after 30 days the second top ring of the arch was constructed. In that way the reduction of scaffolding was achieved by inclusion of bottom arch ring into its bearing capacity. The bridge superstructure is standard reinforced solid concrete slab with constant depth of 65cm at the central 6.05m wide part of cross section, and thinner toward transverse ends of the cross section. The superstructure is supported by vertical columns P2 to P12 spaced at longitudinal distance of 9.8m. Each vertical support consists of two 200cm wide columns with swallowtail shaped cross section (Figure 3). Clear cross spacing between double columns changes along the arch length. At the crown that distance amounts to 180cm and at arch abutments to 120cm. In the main design of bridge2 it was found that columns P6, P8 and P9 are designed and detailed with hinge connections to both the deck and the arches. All other piers are rigidly connected to the deck, arches or their foundations.

At the abutments A1 and A13 the bridge deck is supported by longitudinally movable steel bearings.

P7

P8

P6

P9

P5

P10

P4

P11

Figure 3: Cross section of the bridge including arches, superstructure and columns The bridge was designed according to the 1960s design codes PTP 2, 3, 5 and 113 and the grade of used materials is shown in Table 1. In the main design the static analysis was performed by the of classical elasticity theory taking into the account bridge dead loads, live traffic loads, shrinkage and temperature effects and wind loads. According to the 1960s national technical standards the bridge was located in the part of the country, where seismic loads could be excluded, due to the low seismicity of the site1. According to the current Croatian seismological chart peak ground acceleration at the location of the bridge is 0.12g. For this reason the authors of this paper thought that the bridge seismic assessment in light of current European seismic design codes could give some indicative results.

Main design Assessment analysis

Materials Concrete Reinforcement Concrete Reinforcement

Deck M-300 St. 37 C20/25 S220B

Piers M-300 St. 37 C20/25 S220B

Arch M-450 St. 37 C25/30 S220B

Foundations M-300 St. 37 C20/25 S220B

Table 1: Classification of materials in main design and in assessment analysis

3. SELECTED METHOD FOR SEISMIC ASSESSMENT

In this paper seismic assessment was done partly according to the guidelines given in the work9. Method used for seismic assessment of arch bridge across Slunjica River in Slunj was static non-linear pushover analysis defined in European code for seismic deign of bridges EN 1998-27. Pushover analysis is a static non-linear analysis of the structure under constant vertical (gravity) loads and monotonically increased horizontal loads, representing the effect of a horizontal seismic component. Second order effects are accounted for. The horizontal loads are increased until a target displacement is reached at a reference point7. The method is applied to the entire bridge structure. European code EN 1998-27 defines that non-linear static analysis should be carried out in two horizontal directions: the longitudinal direction x defined by the centers of the two endsections of the deck and in transverse direction y, which should be assumed to be orthogonal to the longitudinal direction. Node in the center of mass of the bridge deck above the arch crown is selected as the reference point. A static non-linear analysis is carried out, until the target displacements of the reference point is reached. If target displacement is reached under horizontal load whose intensity is higher than the design seismic load we classify bridge as satisfactory. If target displacement is not reached within allowable horizontal load intensity we identify the most critical element of the bridge structure.

4. NUMERICAL MODEL FOR SEISMIC ASSESSMENT

4.1 Materials and geometry of the model Materials used in the numerical model are shown in the Table 1. They are classified according to the Eurocode for concrete structures EN 19925. Materials characteristics for chosen grades match up pretty well with those defined in the main design of the bridge. Cracked condition of concrete cross sections in non-linear static pushover analysis was taken into the account by reduction of the concrete stiffness4. All cross sections of the bridge were defined with their actual as built reinforcement and are shown in the Figure 4.

3.80 0100
0102
0103 0 105 1.20

M S

arch
0110
0 111
0105

0106

0108

2.00
0101 0.40

M S
0103

pier
0104

0102

0 .9 0

S M

deck

Figure 4: Some of cross sections from numerical model of the bridge Each span of the deck has been discretized into four elements, of length equal to 10%, 40%, 40% and 10% of the span. The linear elastic behavior of the element does not strictly call for this fine subdivision, but it has been nonetheless preferred, for sake of accuracy, to refine the mesh near the connections to columns, where the change of stiffness and properties of the mesh are important8. Also, arch segments between spandrel columns have been subdivided into four elements of length equal to 10%, 40%, 40% and 10% of the arch segment length. (Figure 5) The extremities of the column constitute the locations for potential plastic hinges, which may be assumed to extend for one twentieth to one tenth of the member length, depending on the boundary conditions4. For this reason each pier has been subdivided into six elements, of length equal to 5%, 10%, 30%, 40%, 10% and 5% of the its length8. The connection of the columns to the bridge deck and arches was assumed as absolutely stiff. Only piers P6, P8 and P9 have hinges at their ends, based on the original bridge design2. As the bridge is founded on a sound rock support points of numerical model are defined as fixed.
156 249 257 273 183 236 239 227

0.1*l 0.4*l

l
193

181

159 280 263 256

241

0.4*l
188 238

153

location of reference point

254

0.1*l 0.05*h 0.1*h

266

155 259 190

160 229 182 205 235 199 180 276

206

0.1*a

0.4*h h
228 243

0.4*a
255 244

0.3*h
250

a 0.4*a
189

198

152 270

0.1*h
207

226

0.05*h
202

237

173 271

0.1*a

208

Figure 5: Detail of discretization and global view of numerical model

0 00

010 0

1 1.68

1222

4.2 Target displacements According to the EN 1998-27 the target displacement of the reference point dT,x in the longitudinal direction of the bridge x is obtained from equivalent linear multimodal spectrum analysis due to combination of seismic actions Ex+0,3Ey, assuming that the behavior factor of the bridge is q=1.0. For this bridge target displacement in x direction is dT,x=4.57mm. Target displacement of the reference point in the y direction is obtained in the same way as mentioned before, the only difference is that it results from combination of seismic actions Ey+0,3Ex. For this bridge target displacement in y direction is dT,y=7.27mm. 4.3 Horizontal load distribution According to EN 1998-27 the horizontal load increment Fi,j assumed acting on the mass Mi in the direction investigated, at each loading step j, should be taken as equal to: Fi,j = j g Mi i (1) Where the j is the horizontal force increment, normalized to the weight g Mi, applied in step j, and i is a shape factor defining the load distribution along the structure7. For the seismic assessment of this bridge two types of horizontal load distributions were investigated for each direction. First one, constant horizontal load along the deck (i =1 for the deck) and the second one, horizontal load proportional to the dominant mode shape with the largest participation factor in the considered direction. Figure 6 shows two types of considered horizontal load distributions in y direction of the bridge.
166.5 166.5 166.5 13.0 166.5 166.5 166.5 166.5 166.5 166.5 13.0 166.5 166.5 13.0 166.5 166.5 64.3 166.5 166.5 166.5 166.5 166.5 166.5 166.5 166.5 166.5 166.5 13.0 166.5 166.5 11.7 10.4 9.09 7.79 6.49 4.87 2.93 1.63 0.489 13.0 11.7 10.4
39

6 .60 18 .3 2 8.3 3 3.3 6 1.6 6 8.9 10 1 .5 1 09 .9 1 39 .8 15 4 .8 14 4 .8 9 .7 3 5 4 .9 6 2 .7 6 9.1

65 .6
65 .6

9 .99

13.0

2 .4 6

9.76 13.0 11.4 13.0

4 6 .6 5 .12 1 .2 3

0 .3 2 5

9.76 7.15

11.4 4.87 9.75 1.94 7.15 5.85 3.90 1.95 0.491

84 .9 8.2 5 1 .2 3

12.9 11.3 13.0 11.6 9.95 50.6 19.4 4.09

39 .3

13.0 11.6 10.1 7.82 6.67 4.95 2.65 12.3

1 2 4.8 5 .6 1 1 1 .1 5 4 .9

5 .61

2.6 3

11.6 13.0 62.4 68.3

1 64 .8
1 66 .5
.6

59.4

6 8 .4

62 .7

3 7.5

68

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12.5
68 .6

16 1 .5 1 5 1.5 1 39 .8 1 3 3.2 1 16 .5 99 .9 49 .1 4 4.5 3.9 7 31 .4 4.9 0 31 .4 1 9 .4 1 3.0 1 9 .4 1 4 .3 1 .9 9 4 9.1 4 4 .5 57 .8 6 6 .1 6 5 .1

65

2 4 .1 3 .1 0

7.1 0

12.0 68.5

13.0 68.5

66 .1

13.0
64 .3 6 4.3

5 7.8 9 .0 6

13.0 11.3

73 .2 54 .9 4 6.6 30 .0 1 6 .6

62.4 62.4
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11.8

50

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11.8

9.85
50

8.62

46.3 46.3
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13.0

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1.9 9

9.09 7.79 6.49 27.6

0 .5 7 5

0 .57 5

5 .1 1

27.6 19.4 19.4

12.3 12.3 5.55 5.55 0.649

Figure 6: Constant horizontal load distribution along the deck and horizontal load proportional to the dominant (3rd) mode shape in y direction The bridge is subjected to constant vertical gravity loads by self weight and additional dead loads from bridge equipment.

5. RESULTS OF PUSHOVER ANALYSIS

One of the main objectives of the static non-linear pushover analysis is the assessment of the force-displacement curve of the structure (capacity curve) and of the deformation demands of the plastic hinges up to the target displacement. Figure 7 shows two capacity curves attained from pushover analysis of the bridge in the transverse y direction for two types of horizontal load distributions. Capacity curve derived from constant horizontal load along the deck gives smaller bearing capacity of the bridge in the transverse direction than one derived from loading proportional to the dominant (3rd) mode shape. Also, the target displacement dT,y=7.27mm is reached at lower level of horizontal load and it can be stated that constant horizontal load along the deck is more conservative type of load distribution. For both types of horizontal load distribution the target displacement is reached at level of horizontal seismic force higher than largest seismic design load in transverse direction Sd,y (T3=0.31sec) = 0.16g.

Figure 7: Capacity curves of the bridge in the transverse y direction for two types of horizontal load distribution Figure 8 shows two capacity curves attained from pushover analysis of the bridge in the longitudinal x direction for two types of horizontal load distributions. Capacity curve derived from constant horizontal load along the deck gives smaller bearing capacity of the bridge in the longitudinal direction than one derived from loading proportional to the

dominant (4th) mode shape and it can be concluded that it as more conservative type of load distribution. Target displacement dT,x=4.57mm is not reached for both types of horizontal load distributions.

Figure 8: Capacity curves of the bridge in the longitudinal x direction for two types of horizontal load distribution

6. CONCLUSION
Based on results of seismic assessment procedure, the following may be concluded: For current Eurocode defined seismic loadings in transverse direction y we can classify this bridge as satisfactory because target displacement is reached within seismic design loads for both types of horizontal load distribution. As a matter a fact, in transverse direction bridge can bear much higher seismic loads. For longitudinal direction x of the bridge we cannot deem this bridge as satisfactory, because target displacements have not been reached within seismic design loads for neither type of horizontal load distribution. The most critical detail of the bridge, assessed through the reinforcement stress analysis, for the seismic response in longitudinal direction x is the connection of pier P7 to the arch. At that location yielding of reinforcement occurs under horizontal seismic load of 0.06g (Figure 9). This conclusion is also partly confirmed by spalling of concrete cover at that location which was perceived during the visual inspection of the bridge (Figure 9).

Figure 9: Connection of pier P7 and the arch: yielding of reinforcement and sapling of concrete cover The bridge deck and the arch are quite robust in comparison with the columns and hence can be deemed adequate.

REFERENCES
[1] Polivanov, N.I. 1959. Reinforced concrete city and road bridges (Armiranobetonski gradski i drumski mostovi). Beograd: Graevinska knjiga. [2] Tonkovi, K. 1961. Bridge across Slunjica River in Slunj Main design (Most preko Slunjice u Slunju - Glavni projekt). Zagreb: Ienjerski projektni biro. [3] Furundi B. 1969. A collection of technical regulations in civil engineering (Zbirka tehnikih propisa u graevinarstvu). Beograd: Graevinska knjiga. [4] Priestly, M.J.N., Seible, F. and Calvi, G.M. 1996. Seismic design and retrofit of bridges. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. [5] CEN- European Committee for Standardization. 2004. EN 1992-1-1: Design of concrete structures - Part 1-1: General rules and rules for buildings. Bruxelles: CEN. [6] CEN- European Committee for Standardization. 2004. EN 1998-1: Design of structures for earthquake resistance Part 1: General rules, seismic actions and rules for buildings. Bruxelles: CEN. [7] CEN- European Committee for Standardization. 2005. EN 1998-2: Design of structures for earthquake resistance Part 2: Bridges. Bruxelles: CEN. [8] Pinho, R. 2007. Nonlinear Dynamic Analysis of Structures Subjected to Seismic Action. In Pecker, A. (ed). Advanced earthquake engineering analysis. Udine: Springer. [9] Mandi, A. 2008. Limit states of existing bridges, ph.D. disertation (Granina stanja postojeih mostova, disertacija). Zagreb: University of Zagreb, Faculty of Civil Engineering.