Probabilistic Blast Assessment for Reinforced Concrete Bridge Columns

Transportation systems are integral to a community’s growth and development. Reducing vulnerability and creating a resilience transportation system has becoming a prevalent trend in developed countries such the United States and Canada. Egypt has been no outlier to this approach. A beaming spotlight has been put on columns especially, columns which are often considered as bridge primary component with high hazard exposure (i.e. impact and blast). Current codes of practice are mainly based on a deterministic design basis threat, this type of design only analyzes based on the given parameters and incorporates little insight to uncertainties. Numerous researchers have studied the impact of far and near field testing on reinforced concrete columns while others have created and verified computer-based models to simulate the real-life experiments. However, the specific investigation of the influence of blast wavefront uncertainty on the performance of reinforced concrete bridge column under blast loading is extremely limited. As such, the presented study focusses on investigating the probabilistic performance of columns subjected to blast loading. This objective is accomplished initially by creating an OpenSees Model that successfully simulates an ordinary bridge column experiencing a blast load created from a terrorist attack scenario. Furthermore, an iterative probabilistic framework was implemented to facilitate a Monte-Carlo simulation for the considered column. Finally, the results were presented as fragility curves that is considered the base of blast risk assessment for reinforced concrete bridges.