Seismic performance of precast hollow bridge piers with different construction details

Currently the design scheme of precast hollow concrete bridge piers will be adopted in bridge design in China, but there is no code including specific design details of precast segmental piers in high seismic risk area. For comparative study of seismic performance of the hollow bridge piers which had different design details, six specimens of hollow section bridge pier were designed and tested. The specimens consist of the monolithic cast-in-place concrete bridge pier, precast segmental prestressed pier with cast-in-place joint and precast segmental concrete bridge pier with dry joints. Results show that all specimens have good displacement capacity. The bridge pier with bonded prestressed strands exhibits better energy dissipation capacity and higher strength. The un-bonded prestressed strand bridge pier displays less residual plastic displacement and energy dissipation capacity. The bridge pier with both bonded prestressed strands at the edge of the section and un-bonded in the center of the section not only exhibits more ductility capacity and less residual plastic displacement, but also shows better energy dissipation capacity. Compared with experimental results of prestressed bridge columns, analytical result demonstrates the developed numerical analysis model would provide the reasonable and accurate results. © 2014, Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.