Accepted Version CICE2016 (p.754-759) https://www.iifc.org/proceedings/CICE_2016/proceedings.

pdf

ANALYSIS OF POST-TENSIONED PRECAST SEGMENTAL BRIDGE PIERS

REINFORCED WITH STEEL AND FRP BARS

Zhenyu Wang 1,2, Zhongkui Cai 1,2

1
Key Lab of Structures Dynamic Behavior and Control of the Ministry of Education, Harbin Institute of
Technology, Harbin 150090, China. Email: zhenyuwang@hit.edu.cn
2
School of Civil Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150090, China.

ABSTRACT

The rapid construction nature and outstanding self-centring ability make the post-tensioned precast segmental
(PTPS) bridge pier a promising alternative to traditional cast-in-place piers. In this paper, PTPS piers reinforced
with both steel and fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) bars were numerically analyzed. This type of pier is referred
to as a hybrid bars reinforced PTPS bridge pier in this paper. The steel bars which continuously cross the
segment joints (referred to as ED bars) were expected to improve the energy dissipation ability of the PTPS
piers, while the FRP bars were expected to increase the post-yield stiffness and to decrease the residual
displacement. Monotonic and cyclic analyses on hybrid bars reinforced PTPS piers were subsequently
conducted. Three parameters were investigated, namely, the mechanical properties of FRP bars, the FRP bar
reinforcement ratio and the proportion of FRP bars to ED bars. According to the analysis results in this study,
the FRP bars are effective on improving the self-centring ability of the hybrid bars reinforced PTPS piers.

KEYWORDS

Segmental bridge piers, FRP bars, post-yield stiffness, residual displacement, fibre model.

INTRODUCTION

The post-tensioned precast segmental (PTPS) bridge pier is attractive due to its accelerated construction nature
and the self-centring ability. As illustrated in Figure 1(a), this type bridge pier is constructed by assembling
precast concrete segments with post-tensioned tendons. Ou et al. (Ou et al. 2007) proposed to reinforce the
PTPS piers with longitudinal steel bars which continuously crossed the segment joints (referred to as ED bars).
The investigations on such ED bar reinforced PTPS piers indicated that the hysteretic energy dissipation ability
of the piers increased significantly with the ED bar reinforcement ratio (Bu et al. 2012; Ou et al. 2007; Wang et
al. 2008). Furthermore, their researches also showed that the ED bar ratio should be no larger than 0.5% in order

(a) Elevation of the PTPS pier (b) The hybrid bars reinforced PTPS pier
Figure 1 Schematic diagram of PTPS piers

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to maintain negligible residual displacement (Ou et al. 2007). However, such an upper limit is even smaller than
the specification on the minimal steel reinforcement ratio for cast in place bridge piers according to the
Guidelines for Seismic Design of Highway Bridges of China (MTPRC 2008). In spired by the concept of ED
bar reinforced PTPS pier, the hybrid bars reinforced PTPS piers were proposed by the authors of this paper. As
shown in Figure 1(b), both the ED bars and the fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) bars are adopted in this new type
of pier specimen. The ED bars were expected to improve the energy dissipation ability of the PTPS piers, while
the FRP bars were expected to increase the post-yield stiffness and to decrease the residual displacement. These
longitudinal bars can be used in the potential plastic hinge region only in order to make this type of pier more
cost-effective. In order to validate the concept of the hybrid bars reinforced PTPS pier, both pushover and cyclic
analyses were conducted in this study.

SIMULATION OF THE HYBRID BARS REINFORCED PTPS PIERS

Finite Element Model

The proposed hybrid bars reinforced PTPS pier was modelled with OpenSees program, which is an open source,
objected-oriented software framework (McKenna 1997). Each pier segment was simulated by one force-based
beam-column element with 5 Gauss-Lobatto integration points uniformly distributed along the element
(Neuenhofer and Filippou 1997). The zero-length element with a fibre section was adopted to model the
behaviour of the segment joint (Zhao and Sritharan 2007). This element can take into consideration the bond
slip of ED bars at segment joints by using the Bond_SP01 material of OpenSees. Note that this kind of bond slip
is caused by strain penetration, instead of anchorage failure (Sritharan et al. 2000). According to Sun (Sun et al.
2014), the strain penetration effects of a composite bar made with FRP skin over a steel rod can also be
approximately modelled with Bond_SP01 material. Therefore, this material was adopted in this study to
consider the strain penetration effects of the FRP bars as well. Accurate stress-slip relationship of the FRP bar
can be established by pull-out tests; however, such experimental investigation is beyond the scope of this paper
and will be conducted in the future. A truss element which can incorporate the geometric nonlinearity was used
to model the un-bonded post-tensioned tendons. Concrete02 material (Yassin 1994) and Steel02 (Menegotto and
Pinto 1973) material were used to model the concrete and ED bars, respectively. It is worthy to note that the
tensile strength of the concrete fibre in the joint section was defined as zero. FRP bars were modelled with
uniaxial elastic material which can take into consideration the differences of mechanical properties between
tension and compression. For simplicity, the elastic modulus and strength of FRP bars in compression were
defined as 50% of those in tension in this study (Mohamed et al. 2014; Tavassoli et al. 2015).

Model Validation

Two sets of quasi-static tests available in the open literature were utilized to validate the finite element model of
the hybrid bars reinforced PTPS pier. Three ED bars reinforced PTPS pier specimens, tested by Ou et al. (Ou et
al. 2010), together with another three column specimens reinforced with both steel bars and FRP bars, tested by
Ibrahim et al. (Ibrahim et al. 2015), were simulated with the aforesaid fibre model. The predicted hysteretic
curves were compared with the experimental results. Due to space limitation, only two comparisons were shown
in Figure 2. As shown in this figure, the simulated cyclic behaviours compared well with the tested results,
implying that the numerical model used in this study was reasonably accurate.

(a) Specimen C5C (b) Specimen CSF-2.8%-IS-D10-J

Figure 2 Comparison of predicted hysteretic curves with test results

PARAMETRIC ANALYSIS
Prototype Bridge Column Design

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Parametric analysis was then carried out in order to investigate the seismic performance and the self-centring
ability of hybrid bars reinforced PTPS piers. A prototype cantilever PTPS pier was designed. As shown in
Figure 3, the height and the diameter of the prototype cantilever pier were 9.0m and 1.5m, respectively,
resulting in a shear span ratio of 6. The PTPS pier consisted of 6 segments with the same height of 1.5m. The
superstructure gravity load was 0.05fcAg, in which fc was the cylinder strength of the unconfined concrete and
Ag is the cross sectional area of the pier. In addition, the post-tensioning force was 0.05fcAg as well (Bu et al.
2012). The hoop reinforcement volumetric ratio for all the segments was approximately 1.0%. The variation in
the mechanical properties of FRP bars, the reinforcement ratio of FRP bars FRP and ED bar ratio ED is
shown in Table1. Therefore, there were 244=32 specimens in total analysed in this study. Note that the
mechanical properties of BFRP bars and CFRP bars in this table were extracted from experimental
investigations of Ibrahim et al. (Ibrahim et al. 2015) and Mohamed et al. (Mohamed et al. 2014), respectively.

Figure 3 Dimensions of analysed PTPS piers

Table 1 Parameters in parametric analysis

FRP bar ratio ED bar ratio
Mechanical properties of FRP bars
FRP (%) ED (%)
BFRP bars (E=48.4 GPa, u=2.31%) 0.0 0.5
0.4 1.0
CFRP bars (E=140.0 GPa, u=1.32%) 0.6 1.5
0.8 2.0
Note: E=elastic modulus in tension of FRP bars; u=ultimate strain in tension of FRP bars.

Pushover analysis results

The aforesaid 32 specimens were firstly analysed under monotonic displacement. Due to limited space, Figure 4
only presents the pushover curves for the eight specimens of which the ED bar ratio ED equalled to 1.0%. BFRP
bars and CFRP bars were used in the specimens of Figure 4(a) and (b), respectively. The ultimate point in this
study is defined as the drift ratio at which the FRP bars reached the ultimate tensile strain u and broke, or the
drift ratio at which the lateral resistance degraded to 85% of the lateral load capacity. From this figure it is
evident that the FRP bars in the hybrid bars reinforced PTPS piers are very effective on increasing the lateral
load capacity and the lateral stiffness after the specimens yield.

(a) Reinforced with BFRP bars (b) Reinforced with CFRP bars
Figure 4 Comparison of pushover curves of hybrid bars reinforced PTPS piers and ED bar reinforced ones

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The influences of the FRP bars on the post-yield stiffness of the hybrid bars reinforced PTPS piers were further
investigated. In this study, the post-yield stiffness ratio r is defined in the following equation:
P Pyield Dyield
r max (1)
Dmax Dyield Pyield
where, Pmax and Dmax are the lateral resistance and displacement at the peak point of the pushover cure,
respectively; while the Pyield and Dyield are the lateral resistance and displacement, respectively, at the yield point
defined by the energy method. The post-yield stiffness ratios for all the 32 specimens were shown in Figure 5.

(a) Reinforced with BFRP bars (b) Reinforced with CFRP bars
Figure 5 Post-yield stiffness ratios of hybrid bars reinforced PTPS piers

BFRP bars and CFRP bars were adopted in the specimens in Figure 5(a) and (b), respectively. As indicated in
this figure, adding additional FRP bars into ED bar reinforced PTPS piers is very effective on increasing the
post-yield stiffness ratio. Furthermore, it can be found by comparing Figure 5(a) and (b) that, FRP bars with
higher elastic modulus are more effective to improve the post-yield stiffness ratio. In addition, Figure 5 shows
that the post-yield stiffness ratio of hybrid bars reinforced PTPS piers increases with the proportion of FRP bars
to ED bars.

Cyclic analysis results

Residual drift ratio

Based on the pushover analysis results, the CFRP bars of all the hybrid bars reinforced PTPS pier specimens
broke at drift ratios smaller than 4%. Therefore, only BFRP bars were used in the cyclic analysis. A total of 16
specimens were analysed under lateral cyclic displacement excursions up to 4% drift ratio with an increment of
0.5% drift ratio. In order to illustrate the differences in lateral cyclic behaviour between the hybrid bars
reinforced PTPS piers and the ED bar reinforced ones, four specimens were chosen as examples and their
hysteretic curves were plotted in Figure 6. It is evident from this figure that reasonable amount of FRP bars is
very effective on decreasing the residual drift ratios of the PTPS piers. Here, the residual drift ratio is defined as
the ratio of the residual displacement to the height of the PTPS pier.

(a) ED bar ratio = 1.0% (b) ED bar ratio = 1.5%

Figure 6 Comparison of hysteretic curves of hybrid bars reinforced PTPS piers and ED bar reinforced ones

In order to systematically investigate the effect of FRP bars on decreasing the residual drift ratio of hybrid bars
reinforced PTPS piers, the residual drift ratio to the loading drift ratio curves for all 16 specimens were plotted
in Figure 7. For the four specimens in each of the Figure 7(a) ~ (d), the ED bar ratios were identical while the

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FRP bar ratios were variable. It can be drawn from the Figure 7 that if the ED bar ratio of a PTPS pier is no
larger than 1.5%, reinforcing with additional FRP bars was very effective on reducing the residual drift ratios.

(a) ED bar ratio = 0.5% (b) ED bar ratio = 1.0%

(c) ED bar ratio = 1.5% (d) ED bar ratio = 2.0%

Figure 7 Residual drift ratio of hybrid bars reinforced PTPS piers

Cumulative hysteretic energy dissipation ability

Cumulative energy dissipation is an important indicator of seismic performance of a structural member, as

insufficient energy dissipation may lead to overlarge displacement demand of structures in earthquake disasters.
Therefore, cumulative energy dissipation at the end of cyclic analysis Ed of all specimens was calculated and
plotted in Figure 8. The analysed specimens were separated into four group based on the ED bar ratio (ranging
from 0.5% to 2.0%) and each group consisted four specimens with variable BFRP bar ratio (ranging from 0% to
0.8%). As shown in this figure, the cumulative energy dissipation Ed for the four specimens in the same group
was generally the same. This result indicates that the energy dissipation ability of the hybrid bars reinforced
PTPS pier is comparable to its ED bar reinforced counterpart.

Figure 8 Cumulative energy dissipation of hybrid bars reinforced PTPS piers

CONCLUSIONS

This paper presented a numerical analysis on the hybrid bars reinforced PTPS bridge pier, i.e., the pier
reinforced with both FRP bars and steel bars. Based on the analysis results presented herein, the following
conclusions can be drawn:
(1) The FRP bars in the hybrid bars reinforced PTPS pier were very effective to improve the lateral load
capacity and the post-yield stiffness ratio. This improvement would be even more evident if FRP bars with
higher elastic modulus were used.
(2) Increasing the proportion of FRP bars to ED bars would increase the post-yield stiffness ratio of hybrid bars
reinforced PTPS piers.

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(3) Comparing to the ED bar reinforced PTPS pier counterparts, the hybrid bars reinforced piers exhibited
smaller residual drift ratio and similar cumulative hysteretic energy dissipation.

The focus of the current study was to numerically validating the concept of hybrid bars reinforced PTPS piers.
Further experimental validation and systematic analysis are also under way.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by the National Natural Science Foundation
of China (Grant No. 51278150, 51478143). Experimental data from Dr. Yu-chen Ou at National Taiwan
University of Science and Technology is also greatly appreciated.

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