SEISMIC ASSESSMENT OF TRANSPORTATION LIFELINE PIERS OF

BRIDGES AND A FISH PORT

Engr. Michael B. Baylon

ABSTRACT: A need for seismic assessment of important lifelines arises which could
help in reducing seismic damages of the bridges and to inform citizens the danger they
may encounter. The likelihood of strong earthquakes occurring may render many
lifelines obsolete. This paper modelled the pier’s columns of some bridges and a fish
port complex in CAMANAVA area using SAP2000 and used the peak ground
acceleration gathered from PHIVOLCS as input data to the software to conduct analysis
and determine whether horizontal or vertical ground motion will cause more damage to
the structure. In this paper, SAP2000 was used in order to perform the widely used
Nonlinear Static Analysis (Pushover Analysis) and the Nonlinear Dynamic Analysis
(Time History Analysis). The paper focuses and limits this study to determine whether
which ground motion will affect the structure. The final output shall be the fragility
curves which relate the probability of certain damages depending on different peak
ground acceleration. As a result, the probability of occurrence of earthquake in different
peak ground acceleration that shall affect these lifelines will be addressed technically by
declaring whether the pier’s column analyzed in the study will be affected or how
damaged the structure is.

KEYWORDS: seismic assessment; transportation lifeline; fish port complex; seismic fragility
curves; non-linear dynamic analysis; non-linear static analysis

1. INTRODUCTION
Seismic fragility is the probability that a geotechnical, structural, and/or non-
structural system violates at least a limit state when subjected to a seismic event of
specified intensity. Current methods for fragility analysis use peak ground acceleration (PGA),
pseudo spectral acceleration (PSa), velocity (PSv), or spectral displacement (Sd) to characterize
seismic intensity (Kafali & Grigoriu, 2004). These fragility curves indicate the evolving
potential for component and system damage under seismic loading considering time-
dependent corrosion-induced deterioration. The results indicate that while corrosion may
actually decrease the seismic vulnerability of some components, most critical components
suffer an increase in vulnerability (Ghosh & Padgett, 2010).
In establishing the seismic fragility curves, there is no universally applicable best method
for calculating fragility curves. Different methods may be preferred depending on the
circumstances (Requiso, Balili, & Garciano, 2013). The information that would be derived
from the fragility curve can be used by design engineers, researchers, reliability experts,
insurance experts and administrators of critical systems to analyze evaluate and improve
the seismic performance of both structural and non-structural systems(Requiso D. A., 2013). In
principle, the development of bridge fragility curves will require synergistic use of the
following methods: (1) professional judgment, (2) quasi-static and design code consistent
analysis, (3) utilization of damage data associated with past earthquakes, and (4)
numerical simulation of bridge seismic response based on structural dynamics (Shinozuka,
Feng, Kim, Uzawa, & Ueda, 2003).
In the local setting, seismic assessment of bridge piers and a fish port was recently
implemented by students in one of the universities in the country’s capital. Their study was
based from works of Karim-Yamazaki, Shinozuka et. al, and Ang-Park type of fragility curves
with emphasis on the nonlinear static and nonlinear dynamic analyses.
This paper discusses the result of a research project done by groups of undergraduate
civil engineering students whose objective is to accurately assess lifelines in the CAMANAVA
area under various magnitudes of earthquakes. These lifelines that were studied are reinforced
concrete deck girder bridge piers, fish port complex building columns, and light rail transit piers.
The inputs of this research project are mainly maiden and/or retrofitted structural plans from
DPWH, LRTA Depot, and respective city engineer’s office. Ground motion data from
PHIVOLCS, PEER, and K-net.com were also collated. To process these data, both nonlinear
analyses of structures were utilized; these are Pushover Analysis and Time History Analysis.
The outputs are generated seismic fragility curves of the lifelines based from shear failure.

2. METHODOLOGY
For the purpose of developing a seismic fragility curve, two methods namely nonlinear
static (Fig. 2) and nonlinear dynamic analysis (Fig. 3) were used to account for shear failure of
one of its piers using SAP2000. Figure 1 illustrates how will these two methods affects the
construction of seismic fragility curves. This methodology will be applied repeatedly to the
succeeding lifeline structures.

Figure 1. Methodology

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 Figure 2. Nonlinear static analysis (Pushover analysis).

Figure 3. Nonlinear dynamic analysis (Time history analysis).

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3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

After obtaining the Pushover curves and the hysteresis models, one can now compute for
the ductility factors. First locate the yield point and the maximum displacement of the pushover
curve (Fig. 4 and Table 1) and compute for the area under the pushover curve which can be seen
in Table 2.

Figure 4. Pushover curve yield point and displacement.

Table 1. Pushover coordinates.

Step Displacement BaseForce Remarks

m kN
0 -1.483E-18 0
1 0.1 1829.35
2 0.164796 3014.70  Yield point
3 0.196275 3316.17  Maximum displacement
... ... … ...
10 0.896275 2973.63
11 0.996275 2924.70
12 1 2922.87

Table 2. Area under pushover curve (energy at yield point)

Formula b h Ee
½bh 0.164796 3014.7 248.4052506

Next is to compute for the area of the hysteresis model using the software
AutoCAD, as it can be seen in Fig. 5.

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 Figure 5. Computing the area of the Hysteresis by AutoCADTM.

After gaining all parameters needed for ductility factors once can use Microsoft
Excel to compute the ductility factors up to damage indexes. This can be seen in Table 3.

Table 3. Computation of Damage Index (DI) and Damage Rank (DR). e.g. Bohol Earthquake

DUCTILITY DAMAGE DAMAGE

STATIC NON-LINEAR ANALYSIS DYNAMIC NON-LINEAR ANALYSIS
FACTORS INDEX RANK
PGA
δmax δy Ee δmax Eh µd µu µh (DI) (DR)

0.2 g 0.196275 0.164796 248.40525 0.06143 5.291277011 0.372764 1.191018 0.021301 0.315662 C

0.4 g 0.196275 0.164796 248.40525 0.1228 21.16806174 0.745164 1.191018 0.085216 0.636385 B

0.6 g 0.196275 0.164796 248.40525 0.18429 47.65293468 1.118292 1.191018 0.191835 0.963098 A

0.8 g 0.196275 0.164796 248.40525 0.24563 84.71743748 1.490509 1.191018 0.341045 1.294411 As

1.0 g 0.196275 0.164796 248.40525 0.30709 132.3712585 1.863455 1.191018 0.532884 1.631703 As

1.2 g 0.196275 0.164796 248.40525 0.36846 190.6561724 2.235855 1.191018 0.767521 1.973928 As

1.4 g 0.196275 0.164796 248.40525 0.42995 259.0634974 2.608983 1.191018 1.042907 2.321895 As

1.6 g 0.196275 0.164796 248.40525 0.49131 338.8256055 2.981322 1.191018 1.364003 2.674958 As

1.8 g 0.196275 0.164796 248.40525 0.55278 429.4979965 3.354329 1.191018 1.729021 3.034112 As

2.0 g 0.196275 0.164796 248.40525 0.61434 529.0716826 3.727882 1.191018 2.129873 3.398238 As

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 By summing up all the counts of every damage index of every earthquake data as
it can be seen in Table 3, one can compute for the damage ratio of each damage index which is
summarized in Table 4 and can be illustrated in Fig. 6.

Table 4. All Earthquake Counts and Damage Ratios.

COUNT DAMAGE RATIO

PGA D C B A As D C B A As
0.2 g 10 5 0 0 0 0.2 g 0.6666667 0.3333333 0 0 0
0.4 g 4 9 1 1 0 0.4 g 0.2666667 0.6 0.0666667 0.0666667 0
0.6 g 3 8 2 1 1 0.6 g 0.2 0.5333333 0.1333333 0.0666667 0.066667
0.8 g 3 5 2 3 2 0.8 g 0.2 0.3333333 0.1333333 0.2 0.133333
1.0 g 2 2 5 3 3 1.0 g 0.1333333 0.1333333 0.3333333 0.2 0.2
1.2 g 2 2 2 3 6 1.2 g 0.1333333 0.1333333 0.1333333 0.2 0.4
1.4 g 1 3 0 5 6 1.4 g 0.0666667 0.2 0 0.3333333 0.4
1.6 g 0 3 1 2 9 1.6 g 0 0.2 0.0666667 0.1333333 0.6
1.8 g 0 3 1 0 11 1.8 g 0 0.2 0.0666667 0 0.733333
2.0 g 0 3 1 0 11 2.0 g 0 0.2 0.0666667 0 0.733333

Figure 6. Frequency chart per damage rank.

One can compute for the mean (μ) and standard deviation (σ) of all the earthquake counts
using Maximum Likelihood Estimate (MLE) (Requiso, Balili, & Garciano, 2013). This is
summarized in Table 5.

Table 5. Tabulation of the statistical parameters to be used in the plotting of fragility curves.

Damage Ratio D C B A As
MEAN 1.495912761 1.981027686 2.27510658 2.433917553 2.658697831
STANDEV 0.734910121 0.642327251 0.369400506 0.30889602 0.249402945

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 The probability of exceedance can now be obtained using the statistical parameters
derived from Table 5. Table 6 summarizes this computation of probability of occurrence for
each damage rank.

Table 6. Summary of probability of exceedance per damage rank (DR)

PGA D C B A As
(in g)
0.2 0 0.02093 0.00001 0.00000 0.00000
0.4 0.43044 0.16959 0.00699 0.00028 0.00000
0.6 0.64671 0.37277 0.08685 0.01614 0.00019
0.8 0.77873 0.54909 0.28041 0.11320 0.00821
1 0.85804 0.68109 0.50896 0.31303 0.06619
1.2 0.90652 0.77475 0.69708 0.54101 0.21954
1.4 0.93692 0.84003 0.82467 0.72641 0.43815
1.6 0.95647 0.88541 0.90231 0.84950 0.64793
1.8 0.96935 0.9171 0.9467 0.92155 0.80289
2 0.97803 0.93941 0.97121 0.96051 0.89875

In Table 7, the probability of exceedance of Table 6 is now highlighted with the PGA of
different significant earthquakes, e.g., Mindoro (1999), Bohol (2013), Kobe Japan (1995) and
Tohoku-Kanto (2011). The PGAdesign as claimed by the source of the structural plans is lower
than that of the two Japan-based PGAs. But as per Philippine-based PGAs, the design PGA is
higher than that of the local ones.

Table 7. Probability of exceedance as compared to the PGA of significant earthquakes

PGA Slightly Moderately Extensive Completely
Damage Damage Damage Damage
0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
0.10 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
MINDORO 0.15 0.01 0.00 0.00 0.00
BOHOL 0.22 0.03 0.00 0.00 0.00
DESIGN 0.50 0.27 0.03 0.00 0.00
KOBE 0.82 0.57 0.30 0.13 0.01
TOHOKU 2.99 0.99 1.00 1.00 1.00
3.00 0.99 1.00 1.00 1.00

By using lognormal distribution one can compute for the “Pr” or the Probability of
exceedance. Then one can plot the acquired cumulative probability with the peak ground
acceleration (PGA) normalized to different excitation. The fragility curve can now be obtained
(Fig. 7).

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 Figure 7. Seismic fragility curves of Tullahan-Ugong Bridge.

The above procedure was repeated for the rest of the lifeline structures and can be
summarized by the following charts. In Fig. 8, the fragility curves of the lifelines are plotted
when DR=’C’ or equivalent to Slightly Damage. This is followed by charts of Figures 9, 10, and
11 which correspond to Damage Ranks B, A, and As, respectively.

Figure 8. Seismic fragility curves of Lifelines of Slightly Damage rank.

Figure 9. Seismic fragility curves of Lifelines of Moderately Damage rank.

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 Figure 10. Seismic fragility curves of Lifelines of Extensively Damage rank.

Figure 11. Seismic fragility curves of Lifelines of Collapse Damage rank.

From the fragility curves that were developed, it can be seen that each damage rank
increase from different peak ground acceleration. There is a low possibility that the bridge will
be completely damage at a peak ground acceleration of 0.7g, it also shows that the curve for
completely damage gradually increase at approximately 0.8g, these data suggests that the piers
of the bridge is sufficiently safe from completely damage since it requires larger earthquake
shaking to cause significant damage.

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 The bridge piers are not spared from being damaged. It can be observed that the piers
already have a slightly damage at 0.2g, but none of these damage ranks are able to produce a
100% probability of exceedance.

Figure 12 illustrates one interesting findings in the soon-to-be built LRT-1 South
Extension. It can be plotted in three-dimensional representation the probability of exceedance of
the four (4) known damage ranks versus the four (4) historically significant ground motion
intensities in PGA. While Table 8 summarizes the probability of exceedance of different
lifelines based from the historically significant earthquakes’ PGA.

Figure 12. A 3D plot of probability of exceedance of a lifeline pier based from damage ranks
vis-a-vis historically significant PGAs

Table 8. Summary of Probability of Exceedance of CAMANAVA Lifelines as per significant Historical

PGAs of Extensively Damage Rank, A.

Navotas Tullahan Tullahan LRT1

in g. m/s2 Fishport Lambingan (Mal-Val) Bangkulasi (Ugong) South
MINDORO
1999 0.15 1.50 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000
BOHOL 2013 0.22 2.14 0.000 0.002 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000
KOBE 1995 0.82 8.06 0.283 0.522 0.017 0.338 0.130 0.229
TOHOKU-
KANTO 2011 2.99 29.33 0.998 0.998 1.000 0.997 0.999 0.963

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4. CONCLUSION

This paper discusses the fragility curve as an effective tool for analyzing,
designing, and evaluation of a structure that subjected to an earthquake. It can be used as an
effective tool for visualizing the effect of an earthquake to lifelines such as bridges, light rail
transit, and fish port complex structure, by knowing their response to earthquake. One can tell
how much it has been damaged if an earthquake occurs. It can be seen that the bridge piers, fish
port complex columns, and light rail transit piers are still safe from shear failure since it
requires a larger ground shaking to cause significant damage and these results gives us
proof to its structural safety and serviceability.

For the other researchers that would like to continue this study, it is recommended to
consider of having the probability of two or more simultaneous possible failure modes. This is
to have a proper assessment of bridges that subjected to as many recorded ground motions as
possible.

REFERENCES:
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complex, Caloocan: Undergraduate Thesis; University of the East - Caloocan.
Algura, D. O., Decal, A., Quilang, J. R. & Romero, E. J., 2015. Seismic Assessment of Tullahan Bridge
(Malabon-Valenzuela), Caloocan: Undergraduate Thesis; University of the East - Caloocan.
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Baylon, M. B., 2015. Seismic assessment of transportation lifeline in Metro Manila. Caloocan, University
of the East - Caloocan.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Engr. Michael B. Baylon is a registered civil engineer and currently an instructor in the University of the
East – Caloocan Campus. He’s currently finishing his master’s thesis at De La Salle University – Manila
where he also obtained his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering with specialization in structural
engineering. He can be reached through his email address: [email protected].

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The author gives credit to the following: PHIVOLCS, DPWH Bureau of Designs, and LRTA Depot for
providing necessary data; his undergraduate thesis advisees for believing that they can accomplish such
research project.

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