Vehicular Collision Performance Assessment of RC Piers Designed in Accordance with American, European, and Chinese Current Bridge Codes

Current bridge codes in the US, Europe, and China specify different vehicular collision loads and seismic provisions for reinforcement concrete (RC) piers. This paper presents a vehicular collision performance assessment of designed RC piers in the three regions. Before that, a detailed finite-element (FE) model was developed to simulate the behavior of an RC pier under truck collision and postcollision axial compression. It was validated by reported tests and then confirmed to be used for the assessment after comparison with existing simplified FE models. Finally, a residual deformation–based performance assessment method was proposed for RC piers after truck collisions. Assessment results show that when the truck weight and/or collision speed decrease, an RC pier tends to fail in flexure rather than in flexure and shear. Its performance level becomes better as the truck weight and/or collision speed decrease and/or the peak ground acceleration increases. Nevertheless, flexure and shear failure remains and the performance level is unchanged with the increase in the peak ground acceleration when the collision speed is relatively higher. When subjecting the 196 kN and 60 km/h truck collision, RC piers designed according to the American current bridge code are safer due to the specified greater vehicular collision load. Under the collisions of the 196 kN truck at speeds of 100–140 km/h or the 392 kN truck at speeds of 60–100 km/h, RC piers designed in accordance with European current bridge codes are safer due to the suggested greater earthquake load. However, when the collision speed of the 392 kN truck becomes 140 km/h, RC piers designed according to current bridge codes in the three regions are all unsafe. In the proposed method, the residual deformation is related to the ratio of residual to initial axial compressive capacities. Therefore, the proposed method can be used for rapid and accurate performance assessment of RC piers after truck collision accidents.