Direct displacement-based design accuracy prediction for single-column RC bridge bents

In the last decade, displacement-based (DB) methods have become established design procedures for reinforced concrete (RC) structures. They use strain and displacement measures as seismic performance control parameters. As for other simplified seismic design methods, it is of great interest to prove if they are usually conservative in respect to more refined, nonlinear, time history analyses, and can estimate design parameters with acceptable accuracy. In this paper, the current Direct Displacement-Based Design (DDBD) procedure is evaluated for designing simple single degree of freedom (SDOF) systems with specific reference to simply supported RC bridge piers. Using different formulations proposed in literature for the equivalent viscous damping and spectrum reduction factor, a parametric study is carried out on a comprehensive set of SDOF systems, and an average error chart of the method is derived allowing prediction of the expected error for an ample range of design cases. Following the chart, it can be observed that, for the design of actual RC bridge piers, underestimation errors of the DDBD method are very low, while the overestimation range of the simplified displacement-based procedure is strongly dependent on design ductility.