Seismic assessment on the existing highway bridges in Taiwan

The current engineering technology as well as economy-benefit policy to enhance the seismic capacity of the bridges in Taiwan is introduced in this paper. A plan of seismic retrofitting for more than 2,200 highway bridges all over Taiwan performed through 2006 to 2008 is the focus to present and discuss. Fifteen types of bridge in which were categorized in advance according to their different seismic responses, based on the lessons learnt from the experienced catastrophic earthquakes. Some representative bridges in each type were preceded with either pushover analysis or time history analysis to get the seismic capacity. Accordingly, the seismic fragility curves for each group can be established statistically. The feasible retrofitting approaches and the cost required for the grouped bridges with insufficient seismic capacity were evaluated to serve as the basis of seismic retrofitting for the numerous existing bridges. As a result, the possible resulting benefits of social economy can be explored and discussed to support the optimal retrofitting strategy.