Reliability Analysis of Bridge Piers Considering Compressive-Flexural Failure Mechanism
The cantilever construction of the asymmetric superstructure of a bridge would induce great unbalanced bending moments in the substructure.To analyze the reliability of the reinforced concrete(RC)piers under biaxial compression induced by the unbalanced bending moments,a reliability analysis method considering the compressive-flexural failure mechanism is proposed.In this method,the Nikitin formula is used as a function,and the constitutive relation between reinforcement and concrete is applied to solve the axial compression bearing capacity and unidirectional eccentric compression bearing capacity.With the material property and geometrical property of the RC piers as well as the external loads as random variables,the issues that should be solved using reliability indexes are converted to unconstrained optimal issues based on the physical meaning of the reliability indexes,and the genetic simulated annealing algorithm is used to obtain the reliability indexes of the RC piers.The method has been applied to the reliability analysis of the pier No.46 of the main bridge of the reconstruction project of Hefei East Station that crosses Wenzhong Road.The results demonstrate that when the cantilever construction was progressed to the stages of self-weight unbalance and maximum bending moments,the reliability indexes of piers P1-P3 are 5.44,5.05 and 5.94,respectively.The impacts of the random variables on the reliability indexes weaken from the self-weight of superstructure to the strength of reinforcement and to the compressive strength of concrete,while the impact of wind loads is relatively minor.