Damage Analysis of Reinforced Concrete Piers under Vehicle Collision

In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to the safety of bridges affected by vehicle-pier collisions. Up to date, the vehicular impact demand, dynamic responses, and damage characteristics of reinforced concrete (RC) piers under vehicle collisions have been studied, but few studies discussed the damage quantifications of RC piers in this circumstance with full consideration of their specific damage characteristics. This study aims to provide a framework used to quantify and classify the damage of RC piers under vehicle collision, where a damage index is proposed taking both the shear and flexural damage into account. Finite element (FE) simulations are further conducted to study the section-level deformation and damage characteristics of a three-column type of RC piers under vehicle impact. The simulation results reveal that the vehicular impact energy, stirrup diameter, and the bottom constraint location of the piers all affect the damage of the piers. It is found that the damage features of RC piers observed from the FE simulations are generally consistent with the damage indices, although future work is also required to make them more accurate and effective.