A novel proficient and sufficient intensity measure for probabilistic analysis of skewed highway bridges

In this paper, a new intensity measure of earthquakes for probabilistic seismic analysis is presented for skewed highway bridges. Three different cases of skewed bridges with different skew angles (0°, 30° and 45°) are considered. Well-known intensity measures (e.g., PGA, Sa) are evaluated and critically discussed based on sensitivity analysis: efficiency, practically, proficiency and sufficiency of intensity measures are considered in detail. The analyses demonstrated that the intensity measures have to take into account structural acceleration on a wide range of periods so that a new seismic intensity measure is proposed showing that it has less dispersion compared to others. Since the proposed intensity represents the average value of the Sa (between a lower and upper structural period) it has been called Averaged Spectral Acceleration (ASA). Based on performed incremental dynamic analysis (IDA), the seismic analytical fragility curves of typical skewed highway bridges have been evaluated for different states of damage controlling the low dispersion of the ASA index as well as its proficiency and sufficiency.