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The Integral bridge have a continuous deck that is fully connected to the abutment. This study compares Fully integral bridge and Conventional simply supported bridge commonly under primary and secondary loads. Primary loads refer to the weight of the bridge, traffic loads, water current forces, wind load, seismic load and earth pressure calculations while secondary loads include temperature variations, shrinkage and other environmental factors. The research evaluates the effect of these loads on the structural behavior of the bridges and their resistance to deformation and failure. The bridge on Dehu-Sangurdi road near Pune is taken for case study. The length of bridge is 90 m with 4 spans of each 22.5 m. The STAAD Pro software is used to model and analyze the both type of bridges under different loading conditions. The research findings indicate that Fully integral bridge have higher resistance to deformation. The study compares the response of Fully integral Bridge and Conventional simply supported bridge to these loads based on deflection and bending moment parameters.

Integral bridges are a class of bridges with integral or semi-integral abutments, designed without expansion joints in the bridge deck of the superstructure. The significance of an integral bridge design is that it avoids durability and recurring maintenance issues with bridge joints, and maybe bearings, which are prevalent in traditional bridges. Integral bridges are less costly to construct. They require less maintenance and therefore cause less traffic disruptions that incur socio-economic costs. As a consequence, integral bridges are becoming the first choice of bridge design for short-to-medium length bridges in many countries, including the UK, USA, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and many other Asian countries. However, integral bridge designs are not without challenges: issues that concern concrete creep, shrinkage, temperature effects, bridge skew, structural constraints, as well as soil–structure interactions are amplified in integral bridges. The increased cyclic soil–structure interactions between the bridge structure and soil will lead to adverse soil ratcheting and settlement bump at the bridge approach. If movements from bridge superstructures were also transferred to pile-supported substructures, there is a risk that the pile–soil interactions may lead to pile fatigue failure. These issues complicate the geotechnical aspects of integral bridges. The aim of this paper is to present a comprehensive review of current geotechnical design practices and the amelioration of soil–structure interactions of integral bridges.

The primary objective of this study is to investigate the benefits of adding tire rubber as an inclusion to backfill behind integral bridge abutments. In this respect, four physical model tests that enable cyclic loading of the backfill-abutment are conducted and evaluated. Each test consisted of 120 load cycles, and both the horizontal force applied to the top of the abutment wall and the pressures along the wall-backfill interface is measured. The primary variable in this study is the tire rubber content in the backfill soil behind the abutment. Results show adding tire rubber to the backfill would be beneficial for both pressure and settlement behind the abutment. According to results, adding tire rubber to soil decreases the equivalent peak lateral soil coefficient (K eq-peak ) up to 55% and earth pressure coefficient ( K ∗ ) at upper parts of the abutment up to 59%. Moreover, the settlements of the soil behind the wall are decreased up to 60%.

Expansion and contraction of bridge decks move integral bridge abutments (IABs) toward and away from the backfill, resulting in high horizontal earth pressures, backfill surface settlements, and abutment toe movements away from the backfill. Geofoam can reduce relative abutment movements to the backfill when the abutment moves toward the backfill due to bridge deck expansion. Geosynthetic reinforcement can improve the stability of the backfill, thus reducing backfill surface settlements when the abutment moves away from the backfill due to bridge deck contraction. Numerical analysis was utilized in this study to investigate mechanisms of geosynthetic reinforcement and geofoam and effects of key parameters, such as the thickness and elastic modulus of geofoam and the length and vertical spacing of geosynthetic reinforcement. Increasing the thickness and/or reducing the elastic modulus of geofoam could reduce maximum horizontal earth pressures in the backfill. However, the effects of geofoam to reduce backfill surface settlements were not significant. In addition, geosynthetic reinforcement reduced surface settlements of the backfill away from the abutment but increased surface settlements of the backfill right behind the abutment. By connecting the front ends of geosynthetic reinforcements with the abutment, settlements of reinforced backfill decreased at the expense of large settlements of unreinforced backfill. Furthermore, geofoam together with geosynthetic reinforcement with wrap-around facing could significantly minimize seasonal temperature change-induced problems for IABs.

Existing design guidelines for concrete hinges consider bending-induced tensile cracking, but the structural behavior is oversimplified to be time-independent. This is the motivation to study creep and bending-induced tensile cracking of initially monolithic concrete hinges systematically. Material tests on plain concrete specimens and structural tests on marginally reinforced concrete hinges are performed. The experiments characterize material and structural creep under centric compression as well as bending-induced tensile cracking and the interaction between creep and cracking of concrete hinges. As for the latter two aims, three nominally identical concrete hinges are subjected to short-term and to longer-term eccentric compression tests. Obtained material and structural creep functions referring to centric compression are found to be very similar. The structural creep activity under eccentric compression is significantly larger because of the interaction between creep and cracking, i.e. bending-induced cracks progressively open and propagate under sustained eccentric loading. As for concrete hinges in frame-like integral bridge construction, it is concluded (i) that realistic simulation of variable loads requires consideration of the here-studied time-dependent behavior and (ii) that permanent compressive normal forces shall be limited by 45% of the ultimate load carrying capacity, in order to avoid damage of concrete hinges under sustained loading.

The behavior of isolated integral bridges at the pier (IBP) is scantly reported in the literature. Herein, its behavior is studied in distinction with the isolated conventional bridge under multi-component far and near-field earthquakes. Nonlinear time-history analysis of isolated and corresponding fixed-base bridges having the same geometry is conducted. The response reduction of isolated bridges compared to fixed-base bridges is used as an index to characterize the relative performance of the isolated IBP. The study shows isolating IBP provides greater response reduction and greater protection against damage measured in terms of the maximum plastic hinge rotations that occur in the bridges.

The discrete element method, implemented in a modular GPU based framework that supports polyhedral shaped particles (Blaze-DEM), was used to investigate effects of particle shape on backfill response behind integral bridge abutments during temperature-induced displacement cycles. The rate and magnitude of horizontal stress build-up were found to be strongly related to particle sphericity. The stress build-up in particles of high sphericity was gradual and related to densification extending relatively far from the abutment. With increasing angularities, densification was localised near the abutment, but larger and more rapid stress build-up occurred, supported by particle reorientation and interlock developing further away.

Recently, the fully integral bridge system that integrates the entire superstructures and substructures together to form a monolithic rigid frame has been presented, since it is anticipated that this approach will lead to improvements in aesthetics, economic efficiency, and seismic performance of a bridge system. This study is related to a fully integral steel bridge with struts installed in-between the piers at the middle of the bridge span, which is called a strut-braced pier. Thus, it is expected that the strut-braced pier mainly prevents horizontal loads like earthquake load or vehicle braking load. In this study, the seismic performance of the fully integral steel bridge was evaluated in accordance with Caltrans Seismic Design Criteria which involves displacement criteria, displacement ductility capacity requirement, and member force criteria. The capacities of the member forces and the displacement were determined through nonlinear static pushover analysis using OpenSees. As a result, the fully integral steel bridge met the seismic performance criteria specified in Caltrans with a great margin. A parametric study was conducted to investigate the effect of strut stiffness on the seismic capacities and effects from the horizontal load of the fully integral steel bridge. The results show that the displacement capacity and displacement ductility capacity of the fully integral steel bridge have a slight change when the strut stiffness increases. The member force capacity is primarily affected by the strut-braced pier and increases significantly along with the strut stiffness. The lateral displacement and the sectional member forces are well controlled to a converging value by a proper application of the strut stiffness. Therefore, it was found that the minimum stiffness required for the struts can be defined to sufficiently resist design seismic loads, and thus, the sectional properties of all intermediate piers can be reasonably adjusted by varying only the stiffness of the struts connected to the braced piers. It has a great significance in that such results lead to the feasibility of various economical designs of bridge substructure including piers suitable for each situation.

The flexibility of the foundation system significantly affects the seismic and operational performance of integral abutment bridges (IAB). The so-called pile isolation system can lead to higher flexibility in pile foundations. It consists in backfilling the pile hole with high-damping materials up to a certain depth from the surface level. However, the impact of this solution in increasing the lateral flexibility and reducing the seismic demand strongly depends on the scale factor and pile diameter. Most investigations on this topic are based on experimental tests on scaled pile specimens. This paper explores the pile isolation system’s effectiveness by conducting a multivariate sensitivity analysis of the seismic demand of an IAB structural archetype. The IAB archetype is modelled as a Winkler beam with a piece-wise definition of the subgrade stiffness and equivalent viscous damping, simulating the responses of the soil and high-damping particles. The simulated data are then used to calibrate a probabilistic formulation of the seismic demand reduction due to the pre-hole. The formulation, calibrated following a Bayesian approach, is used to derive estimates of the q -factor associated with the damping pre-hole for possible use in engineering practice. The analyses demonstrate that pile isolation with high-damping material can be effective but possesses a limited dissipating capacity, with a seismic reduction factor of approximately 1 and 2.

Integral abutment bridges (IABs) are increasingly adopted in transportation infrastructure due to their durability, reduced maintenance needs, and cost-effectiveness compared to conventional bridges. However, their reliable performance under live loads is strongly influenced by the nonlinear soil–structure interaction (SSI) at the pile–abutment joint, which remains challenging to quantify using conventional analysis methods. This study develops simplified spring-based models to capture the SSI behavior of pile–abutment joints in short-span IABs. Predictive equations for joint rotation, deflection, moment, and shear are formulated using Linear Regression (LR) and Response Surface Methodology (RSM). Unlike prior studies relying solely on FEM or traditional p–y curves, the novelty of this work lies in deriving regression-based spring constants calibrated against FEM analyses, which can be directly implemented in standard structural software. This approach significantly reduces computational demands while maintaining predictive accuracy, enabling efficient assessment of pile contributions and global bridge response. Validation against finite element method (FEM) results confirms the reliability of the simplified models, with RSM outperforming LR in representing nonlinear parameter interactions.