153-08 South Carolina Paper rev 8-13-02
A PERFORMANCED BASED SEISMIC DESIGN
CRITERIA FOR HIGHWAY BRIDGES
November 15, 2002
Word Count: 4,976
Roy A. Imbsen – Corresponding Author
Imbsen & Associates, Inc
A TRC Company
9912 Business Park Drive, Suite 130
Sacramento, CA 95827
(916) 366-0632
(916) 366-1501 FAX
raimbsen@imbsen.com
Fadel F. Alameddine
Office of Earthquake Engineering
California Department of Transportation
1801 30th Street
Sacramento, CA 95816
(916) 717-2853
(916) 366-1501 FAX
fadel_alameddine@dot.ca.gov
Lucero E. Mesa
South Carolina Department of Transportation
Bridge Design Section
955 Park Street, Room 508
Columbia, SC 29202
(803) 737-1765
(803) 737-1881 FAX
mesale@dot.state.sc.us
TRB 2003 Annual Meeting CD-ROM
Paper revised from original submittal.
153-08 South Carolina Paper rev 8-13-02
A PERFORMANCED BASED SEISMIC DESIGN
CRITERIA FOR HIGHWAY BRIDGES
By
Roy A. Imbsen, Fadel F. Alameddine and Lucero E. Mesa
ABSTRACT
South Carolina Department of Transportation (SCDOT) has recently developed a
new specification for the seismic design of highway bridges. Their goal was to develop a new
specification that incorporated the most recent technology available to bridge engineers and
could be readily incorporated into design. The specification is performance based using
displacement demands and displacement capacities as opposed to the previously used force
demands and reduction factors, R, (i.e., ductility factors). In addition to being performance
based, the new SCDOT design specification includes:
1. New USGS probabilistic earthquake ground motion maps
2. Two earthquake design hazards and associated performance objectives
3. New soil factors
4. Expanded design criteria for bridges.
This paper describes the new seismic design criteria and the implementation plan into
practice within their department and to their consultants. Additionally, the paper briefly
describes the evolution to the performance-based criteria from t