Courbes de fragilite pour les ponts au Quebec tenant compte du sol de fondation Fragility curves for bridges in Quebec accounting for soil-foundation system

Fragility curves are a very useful tool for seismic risk assessment of bridges. A fragility curve describes the probability of a structure being damaged beyond a specific damage state for different levels of ground shaking. Since more than half of all bridges in the province of Quebec (Canada) are in service for more than 30 years and that these bridges were designed at that time without seismic provisions, generating fragility curves for these structures is more than necessary. These curves can be used to estimate damage and economic loss due to an earthquake and prioritize repairs or seismic rehabilitations of bridges. Previous studies have shown that seismic damage experienced by bridges is not only a function of the epicentral distance and the severity of an earthquake but also of the structural characteristics of the bridge and the soil type on which it is built. Current methods for generating fragility curves for bridges do not account for soil conditions. In this work, analytical fragility curves are generated for multi-span continuous concrete girder bridges, which account for 21% of all bridges in Quebec, for the different soil profile types specified in the Canadian highway bridge design code (CAN/CSA-S6-06). These curves take into account the different types of abutment and foundation specific to these bridges. The fragility curves are obtained from time-history nonlinear analyses using 120 synthetic accelerograms generated for eastern Canadian regions, and from a Monte Carlo simulation to combine the fragility curves of the different structural components of a bridge.;Keywords: Seismic risk assessment, fragility curves, damage limit states, multi-span continuous concrete girder bridges in Quebec, Monte Carlo simulation.