EXPLORATORY RESEARCH ON HIGHWAY BRIDGES SEISMIC DAMAGE ASSESSMENT SYSTEM FOR CHINA

Seismic damage of highway bridges is always a big problem, especially under the situation that the destructive earthquake often occurs in recent years. This paper is aimed to make an effort to promote the improvement of the seismic damage assessment system of China. Considering HAZUS's good performance in seismic assessment, a similar assessment method was implemented in this paper. Based on the models used in HAZUS, the classification for the highway bridges in China was done and a basic assessment model was obtained which could be used for the highway bridges in China. The prediction was checked by the statistical results of the highway bridges seismic damage under Wenchuan earthquake. It showed that the model proposed by this paper is reasonable and could provide references for the development of seismic damage assessment system in China. However, the research could be just called exploratory research because the model was not so accurate for some kinds of highway bridges with the limit of time and data. More efforts should be made to improve the model along the way described in this paper.