Analysis and Design of Reinforced Concrete Piers against Vehicle Impact (Concrete 2021)

This webinar was recorded at Concrete 2021 and the speaker is Tin V Do.
Vehicle collision to bridge piers has been identified as one of the primary reasons causing failure of bridge structures in the last few decades. An intensive impact force from a travelling vehicle with a high velocity would cause severe damage to an impacted pier leading to its failure or even collapse of substructures. Therefore, it is crucial to understand the dynamic performance of piers under impact load induced by a vehicle impact event from which an effective and reliable design approach can be developed for engineering applications.
Currently, to design structures under impact loads, a simplified method by using Equivalent Static Force (ESF) has been widely adopted in several standards and design guidelines.
However, it has been found that the use of the ESF method may lead to an unconservative design since the dynamic responses of structures, i.e. the induced inertial force and the associated variations in the internal forces, have been completely ignored. Also, many damage modes of bridge piers observed in vehicle collision incidents cannot be explained by using ESF. Therefore, this study systematically investigated the dynamic performance of reinforced concrete (RC) piers under vehicle impact by using numerical simulations and analytical approaches.
Numerical models developed in this study were carefully calibrated against impact testing results and actual vehicle impacts that were documented in the previous reports. Based on numerical and analytical results, time-dependent impact force profiles from different vehicle types impacting RC piers and a dynamic shear capacity model of structures under impact load were developed.
A completed procedure to design RC piers under vehicle impact considering the contribution of inertia resistance and dynamic increase factor of materials has also been proposed for engineering applications. It is noted that this study has been reproduced from the previous publications of the authors and the PhD thesis of the first author as an honour duty of the winner of the 2021 National Bursary Award by Concrete Institute Australia for his best PhD thesis award.