June 3, 2020 Thesis Open Access

Upgrading the Seismic Performance of Concrete bridge column Using Fiber Reinforced Polymer Under earthquake Load

Abrham Tadesse

Thesis supervisor(s)

Tesfye Alemu (PhD)

According to the new Ethiopia construction information and Geological survey, the
ground acceleration of the country is increasing and almost many of the bridge in
Ethiopia designed based on the implementation of the new design code. Analytical
enquiry was conducted to investigate the effect of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer
(CFRP) for retrofitting the bridge column in plastic hinge region for non-seismically
detailed circular column. Finite Element method was used to investigate the selected
bridge column performance and also to evaluate the retrofitting capacity carbon Fiber
reinforced polymer, the results obtained were validated using Farid’s and Priestley’s
empirical formulas. The performance of the selected bridge column under the old and the
new seismic design code was comparatively investigated. Furthermore, the efficiency of
CFRP jacketing in plastic hinge region for retrofitting the bridge column for added
seismic load was evaluated. For the selected bridge column, earthquake load was
estimated using new design code has 33 % load and40% total deformation increment than
the estimated value of load using old design code and the effect of the two loads
analyzed. Overall retrofitting the selected bridge column with Carbon Fiber Reinforced
polymer with increasing thickness from 3mm to 4mm and wrapping the columns from
layer one to three reduce the ultimate deformation, the ultimate rotation and Curvature of
the bridge column 5% to 21%.