Capacity Design of RC Bridge Columns for Seismic Loading

Recently, a tendency for development of seismic approach of foreign countries is capacity design development. Capacity design is rational seismic design concept of capacity protection considering not only earthquake magnitude, but also behavior of structure. For that reason, the most bridge seismic design specifications contain capacity protection provisions explicitly or implicitly. The capacity protection is normally related with slenderness effect of the columns, force transfer in connections between columns and adjacent elements, and shear design of columns. It intends to prevent brittle failure of the structural components of bridges, so that the whole bridge system may show ductile behavior and failure during earthquake events. The objectives of this paper are to deduce needed provisions for the moderate seismicity regions such as Korea after studying current seismic design codes and to establish rational criteria provisions of seismic design for future revision of seismic design specifications.