Development of an uncertainty quantification approach with reduced computational cost for seismic fragility assessment of cable-stayed bridges

Uncertainty quantification is the most important challenge in seismic fragility assessment of structures. The precision increment of the quantification method leads to reliable results but at the same time increases the computational costs and the latter will be so undesirable in cases such as reliability-based design optimization which includes numerous probabilistic seismic analyses. Accordingly, the authors' effort has been put on the development and validation of an approach that has reduced computational cost in seismic fragility assessment. In this regard, it is necessary to apply the appropriate methods for consideration of two categories of uncertainties consisting of uncertainties related to the ground motions and structural characteristics, separately. Also, cable-stayed bridges have been specifically selected because as a result of their complexity and the according time-consuming seismic analyses, reducing the computations corresponding to their fragility analyses is worthy of studying. To achieve this, the fragility assessment of three case studies is performed based on existing and proposed approaches, and a comparative study on the efficiency in the estimation of seismic responses. For this purpose, statistical validation is conducted on the seismic demand and fragility resulting from the mentioned approaches, and through a comprehensive interpretation, sufficient arguments for the acceptable errors of the proposed approach are presented. Finally, this study concludes that the combination of the Capacity Spectrum Method (CSM) and Uniform Design Sampling (UDS) in advanced proposed forms can provide adequate accuracy in seismic fragility estimation at a significantly reduced computational cost.