EVALUATION OF ULTIMATE STRENGTH OF RAILWAY VIADUCTS WITH COLUMNS REINFORCED WITH SPIRAL REBARS USING NONLINEAR DYNAMIC ANALYSIS

Abstract

 It is vital to improve the strength of railway viaducts which are an important part of a transportation system. One promising technique is to reinforce viaducts columns with spiral rebars inside axial reinforcing bars. This technique has already been tentatively applied in the construction of some railway viaducts. It has been empirically shown in previous experimental analyses that a column reinforced with a spiral rebar, a so-called spiral column, has a large deformation capacity. However, the level of seismic force required before railway viaducts with spiral columns reach the ultimate state is still not clear. In this paper, the ultimate strength of railway viaducts with spiral columns were quantitatively evaluated based on nonlinear dynamic analysis.