Internal medicine

Geology

Psychological resilience

Aerospace engineering

Pier

Archaeology

Hydraulics

Mathematics

Psychotherapist

Fragility

Bridge (graph theory)

Civil engineering

Engineering

Physical chemistry

Psychology

Geography

Vulnerability assessment

Chemistry

Geotechnical engineering

Geometry

Flow (mathematics)

Computer science

Bridge scour

Flood myth

Computer security

Environmental science

Medicine

Hydraulic structure

Vulnerability (computing)

Structure and Infrastructure Engineering

Floods, bridge scour, and flood-associated loads have caused over sixty percent of bridge failures in the U.S. Current practices for the vulnerability assessment of instream bridges under the effect of such flood largely rely on qualitative methods, such as visual inspection, without considering uncertainties associated with structural behaviors and flood loads. Recently, numerical methods have been investigated to quantitatively consider such uncertainty effects by adapting fragility analysis concept that has been well established in the earthquake engineering area. However, river hydraulics, geotechnical uncertainties of foundation, variable scour-depth effects, and their significance in structural fragility of bridges have rarely been systematically investigated. This study proposes a comprehensive fragility analysis framework that can effectively incorporate both flow hydraulics and geotechnical uncertainties, in addition to commonly considered components in flood-fragility analysis of bridges. The significance of flow hydraulics and geotechnical uncertainties has been demonstrated through a real-bridge case study. Conventional fragility curves with maximum scour depth may not represent actual vulnerability during floods, as the scour may not reach to the maximum in many cases. Therefore, fragility surface with two intensity measures, i.e. flow discharges and scour depths, is introduced for real-time vulnerability assessment during floods in this study.

Flood-fragility analysis of instream bridges – consideration of flow hydraulics, geotechnical uncertainties, and variable scour depth