Experimental and numerical investigation of the seismic performance of railway piers with increasing longitudinal steel in plastic hinge area

Bridge piers with bending failure mode are seriously damaged only in the area of plastic hinge length in earthquakes. For this situation, a modified method for the layout of longitudinal reinforcement is presented, i.e., the number of longitudinal reinforcement is increased in the area of plastic hinge length at the bottom of piers. The quasi-static test of three scaled model piers is carried out to investigate the local longitudinal reinforcement at the bottom of the pier on the seismic performance of the pier. One of the piers is modified by increased longitudinal reinforcement at the bottom of the pier and the other two are comparative piers. The results show that the pier failure with increased longitudinal bars at the bottom is mainly concentrated at the bottom of the pier, and the vulnerable position does not transfer. The hysteretic loop curve of the pier is fuller. The bearing capacity and energy dissipation capacity is obviously improved. The bond-slip displacement between steel bar and concrete decreases slightly. The finite element simulations have been carried out by using ANSYS, and the results indicate that the seismic performance of piers with only increasing the number of steel bars (less than65%) in the plastic hinge zone can be basically equivalent to that of piers that the number of steel bars in all sections is the same as that in plastic hinge zone.