Experimental Investigation of Blast Performance of Seismically Resistant Concrete-Filled Steel Tube Bridge Piers

S. Fujikura, M. Bruneau and D. Lopez-Garcia

MCEER-07-0005 | 04/20/2007 | 212 pages

Keywords: Blast performance.  Concrete filled steel tube (CFST) columns.  Multihazard assessments.  Bridges.  Piers.  Structural collapse.  Seismically-resistant designs.  Blast loads.  Terrorism.  Blast designs.

Abstract: The research objective is to present the development and experimental validation of a multi-hazard bridge pier concept, i.e. a bridge pier system capable of providing an adequate level of protection against collapse under both seismic and blast loading. A multi-column pier-bent with concrete-filled steel tube (CFST) columns is the proposed concept. The work experimentally investigates the adequacy of such a system under blast loading. The report describes development of the multi-hazard pier concept, design of the prototype bridge pier under blast and seismic loading, specimen design, experimental set-up, and experimental results. Additionally, blast experiment results are compared with results from simplified method of analysis considering an equivalent SDOF system having an elastic-perfectly-plastic behavior. Results find that prototype bridge CFST columns can be designed to provide satisfactory seismic performance and adequate blast resistance. Also shown is that the CFST columns exhibited a ductile behavior under blast load in a series of ¼ scale tests.