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Fiber-Based Seismic Damage and Collapse Assessment of Reinforced Concrete Bridges Using Damage Indices to Improve Transportation Resilience - Earthquakes can have major effects on transportation systems due to the structural damage they impose on bridges. Therefore, it is imperative to assess the seismic damage of bridges appropriately, and this research focuses on reinforced concrete (RC) bridges. This research advances the seismic performance assessment of RC bridges with flexural failure under near-fault ground motion by use of ductility coefficients and damage indices. The methodology included modeling fiber-based nonlinear beam-column elements to simulate the damage development process of RC bridge piers under seismic events, considering the global buckling of longitudinal steel bars, examining the cracking and spalling of cover concrete, and analyzing the effects of bond-slip. The tensile strain represented the damage of the longitudinal bars while the compression strain represented the cover concrete damage. Innovative nonlinear fiber-based finite element models (FEMs) were developed. Nonlinear static cyclic pushover analyses and nonlinear response history analyses were conducted. The simulation results were compared with available pseudo-dynamic test results. The proposed damage indices can indicate the damage state at any stage and the gradual accumulation of damage in RC bridge piers, which are more convincing than most other indices in the literature. The proposed fiber-based nonlinear FEMs, together with the use of ductility coefficients and proposed damage indices, can also assist engineers and researchers in simulating the seismic behavior and assessing the damage state of RC bridge columns in a computationally effective manner which can empower engineers to identify and prioritize RC bridges for seismic maintenance and retrofit to improve transportation resilience.
