SEISMIC ASSESSMENT OF MUZON-BARITAN BRIDGE USING

FRAGILITY CURVES
Princess M. Alcantara1, Glerommie B. Castro2, Marc Adrienne G. Marquez3,
Kent Kevin N. Nieves4, Mary Jane L. Sao5
BSCE, Department of Civil Engineering,
University of the East-Caloocan, Caloocan City 1407
Email: ue.edu.ph

Abstract: Despite the effort to implement the National Structural Code of the Philippines, there is still uncertainty
if structures can withstand different magnitude of earthquakes. Since Philippines lies along the Pacific Ring of Fire,
earthquakes are one of the most destructive natural hazards which can severely damage a structure. In the past, 1994
Mindoro earthquake and 2013 Bohol earthquake devastate the Philippines causing wrecked homes and impassable
bridges. Few studies are made to assess the structures in the Philippines. The immediate objective of this research
project is to assess the Muzon-Baritan Bridge which is an important lifeline especially during calamities, so as to
establish fragility curves. This research uses nonlinear analyses and interval uncertainty analysis to assess the
Muzon-Baritan Bridge under shear failure mode when subjected to 15 ground motion data. This study yields to the
development of fragility curves comparing the conventional with the mean of the lower bound and upper bound
fragility curves. The result shows that the Muzon-Baritan Bridge will be damaged at a certain probability of
exceedance. These findings are helpful for the future disaster planning, retrofitting and cost assessments.
Key Words: Fragility Curves, Nonlinear Static Analysis, Nonlinear Dynamic Analysis, Interval Uncertainty Analysis
Introduction:
1. INTRODUCTION
On 1990, the Philippines was hit by one of
the most devastating earthquakes with a magnitude of
6.5 that hit the Bohol causing 182 collapsed
structures. While the Mindoro earthquake is also a
remarkable event that took place on November 15,
1994 with the magnitude of 7.1 which wrecked 7,566
homes and made 8 bridges impassable for days
(Sun.Star Archives, 2014). The last extreme
earthquake that happened in our country happened on
October 15, 2013 in Bohol with a magnitude of 7.2
which caused 185 people died, 39 bridges damaged
and 7.6 billion cost of damage (Delfin II, 2013).
The earthquake can occur anywhere along
the West Valley Fault, including Metro Manila and it
may shake the ground even a hundred kilometers
away. As stated by PHIVOLCS Director Solidum,
poorly designed, and poorly constructed building far
from the earthquake fault are still vulnerable to
destruction (Luces, 2013).

For a given structures like bridges, it is

possible to predict the damage response in assessing
the structure by the use of fragility curve. The
development of vulnerability information in the form
of fragility curves is a widely practiced approached
when information is to be developed accounting for
multitude of uncertain sources involved, estimation
of seismic hazard, structural characteristics, soil
structure interaction and site condition (Shinozuka et
al., 2001).
The study provides a seismic assessment of
the Muzon-Baritan Bridge located in Malabon City
which has 31.2 m long span.

2. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
Figure 2.1 shows the input, process and
output needed to come up with the fragility curves.

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SEISMIC ASSESSMENT OF MUZON BARITAN BRIDGE USING FRAGILITY CURVES

(2.99g) was also used for the analysis. It was scaled

up or down for normalization to maintain the same
pattern of records at the same time using the formula
of Karim and Yamazaki (2001). These were
normalized to 10 different excitations with equal
intervals from 0.2g to 2.0g to count the number of
occurrence of each damage rank.

3.2 Nonlinear Static Analysis

To create the model of the Muzon-Baritan
Bridge using SAP2000 software for nonlinear static
and dynamic analysis, the section properties were
defined. For nonlinear static analysis, the model was
simulated to obtain a pushover curve. From the
pushover curve, the displacement at yield, maximum
displacement for static and energy at yield will be
obtained. This method adopted the research of
Requiso (2013) for pushover analysis.
1.
3. METHODOLOGY
3.1 Structural Plans and Ground Motion Data

Create the basic computer model and define

the necessary section properties without the
pushover data in the uual manner (see figure
3.4-3.7).

The structural plans (see figure 3.1, 3.2, 3.3)

obtained from the DPWH Malabon-Navotas were
required for the modelling process in the SAP2000
Software.

15-ground motion data of Bohol (0.15g),

Mindoro (0.22g), Kobe (0.82g) and Tohoku-Kanto

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SEISMIC ASSESSMENT OF MUZON BARITAN BRIDGE USING FRAGILITY CURVES

specified direction, a specified mode shape,

or a user-defined static load case. The
displacement controlled lateral pushover
case that was based on a user-defined static
lateral load pattern (named PUSHOVER) is
defined for this study (see figure 3.9-12).

2.

Define properties and acceptance criteria for

the pushover hinges (see figure 3.8).

3.

Locate the pushover hinges on the model by

selecting one or more frame members and
assigning them one or more hinge properties
and locations.
Apply the distributed dead and live load
above the model, then make the dead and
live load case Non-linear. Define the
modal and pushover load cases.
In
SAP2000, more than one pushover load case
can be run in the same analysis. They can
be displacement controlled, that is, pushed
to a specified displacement. Typically,
lateral
pushovers
are
displacement
controlled. SAP2000 allows the distribution
of lateral force used in the pushover to be
parallel with the uniform acceleration in a

4.

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SEISMIC ASSESSMENT OF MUZON BARITAN BRIDGE USING FRAGILITY CURVES

5.
6.

Run the basic static analysis such as Dead,

Live, Modal and Pushover load.
Display the pushover curve (see figure 3.133.14).

3.

Define the time history load case which is a

nonlinear modal function. Select the name
of a previously defined time-history function
that specifies the magnitude of the load as a
function of time. The earthquake is applied
to the structure in the X and Y direction
respectively as an acceleration time-history
(see figure 3.16).

4.

Run the non-linear dynamic response

analysis using the selected records such as
the dead load, live load, modal and the
seismic load.
Add the base function X or Y and the said
joint (see figure 3.17).

3.3 Nonlinear Dynamic Analysis

In nonlinear dynamic analysis, also called as
time-history analysis, bridge piers was modeled to as
a single degree of freedom (SDOF) system.
Nonlinear dynamic analysis was used in the process
in order to come up with the hysteresis models. From
hysteresis models, maximum displacement for
dynamics and hysteretic energy was obtained. This
research adopted the method used by Requiso (2013)
for time history analysis.
1.
2.

5.

Select the earthquake ground motion

records.
Normalize PGA of the selected records to
different excitation levels (see figure 3.15).

6.

Display the Hysteresis model of the

earthquake ground motion data (see figure
3.18).

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SEISMIC ASSESSMENT OF MUZON BARITAN BRIDGE USING FRAGILITY CURVES

Using the values obtained for ductility

factors, damage index was calculated using the
equation below (Park and Ang, 1985) where beta or
the cyclic loading factor is taken as 0.15 for bridges.
3.4 Area Computation
Researchers collected the pushover curve
and the hysteresis models. Before computing the
ductility factors, the displacement at yield ( y),
maximum displacement (max), and the energy at yield
point (Ee) was located and computed from the
pushover curve. These data was tabulated in MS
Excel for the computation of ductility factors as
shown in Table 3.1.

Using the values obtained for damage

indices, the researcher matched these values to Table
3.3 in determination of the damage rank of each
earthquake (Requiso, 2013).

Next, the area of the hysteresis models were

computed with the aid of MATLAB (see figure 3.19).

3.6 Interval Uncertainty Analysis

3.5 Damage Rank

From the values obtained from nonlinear
static and dynamic analysis, ductility factors were
computed using the following formulas (Karim and
Yamazaki, 2001) tabulated using the MS Excel as
shown in Table 3.2:

Interval uncertainty has become an

important issue existing in the eld of structural
reliability (Jiang et al., 2012). But there are two types
of uncertainty limitations that are present in a
fragility analysis: aleatory and epistemic. Nowak and
Racokzy (2013) explain that aleatory is the natural
randomness in a process. Epistemic uncertainty is the
scientic uncertainty in the model of the process due
to limited data and knowledge.
To dene the basic arithmetic operations
between intervals, the key point in computing with

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SEISMIC ASSESSMENT OF MUZON BARITAN BRIDGE USING FRAGILITY CURVES

intervals was computing with sets. Thus, the lower

bound and upper bound would be presented for both
X and Y. Intervals X and Y would denote the ductility
factor in interval form in correlation of getting lower
and upper boundaries of damage index. To get the
lower and upper bound, the coefficient of variation
(COV) would be done in iterative process from 5
percent to 20 percent to find the optimum value for
each damage rank. For X-direction, 5 percent was
used and for Y-direction, 20 percent was used. It
should be noted that the conventional fragility curve
would be really bounded by the IUA fragility curve.
Interval uncertainty analysis adopted the research of
Baylon (2015) which uses normal distribution
function.
3.8 Constructing Conventional Fragility Curves and
IUA Fragility Curves

The same parameters and equations from the

conventional was used for IUA, only that these
parameters would have an interval. After computing
for the interval of ductility factors, the damage index
interval was computed. Afterwards, the damage rank
was determined (see Table 3.4).

The fragility curve was established by

simply plotting acquired cumulative probability with
the peak ground acceleration (PGA) normalized to
different excitation. Afterwards, the differences of the
fragility curves obtained from conventional and IUA
was plotted and compared.
The following fragility curves were the
results in X-direction.

3.7 Probability of Occurrence

After determining the damage indices and
damage ranks, damage ratio was calculated. Damage
ratio was defined as the number of occurrence in each
damage rank divided by the total number of records
(Requiso, 2013). Once it is obtained, damage ratio
was plotted with the natural logarithm of PGA ln
(PGA) on a lognormal probability paper to obtain
required parameters (Mean and Standard Deviation)
using the least squares method (see Figure 3.20).
Once the necessary parameters were
obtained, the cumulative property index (P R) was
calculated using the formula adopted from Karim and
Yamazaki (2001).

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SEISMIC ASSESSMENT OF MUZON BARITAN BRIDGE USING FRAGILITY CURVES

The following fragility curves were the

results in Y-direction.

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SEISMIC ASSESSMENT OF MUZON BARITAN BRIDGE USING FRAGILITY CURVES

probability of exceedance. For complete damage (As)

at safety design, X-direction ranges from 6.14% to
6.16% and Y-direction ranges from 6.1% to 6.5%.
For slight damage (C) at safety design, X-direction
ranges from 18% to 38.2% and Y-direction ranges
from 8% to 47%.
The mean fragility curves of Lower and
Upper Bound shows a small difference of probability
of exceedance at safety design in comparison to the
conventional fragility curves for X direction. For
slight damage (C) and moderate damage (B), the
difference from mean to conventional is 2% only. For
extensive damage (A) and complete damage (A s), the
difference from mean to conventional is 0%.
While for Y direction, the difference from
mean to conventional is 3% only for slight damage
(C), 6% for moderate damage (B), 4% for extensive
damage (A) and 0% for complete damage (As).

4. RESULTS ANALYSIS
The pushover curves in figure 3.13 and 3.14
which is tabulated in Table 3.1 shows that Y has a
larger capacity to withstand 1987.06 kN base shear
force while X can only withstand 1977.71 kN base
shear force. It only means that Y-direction is the
major axis while X-direction is the minor axis.
After counting all the damage rank to
compute the damage ratio and property index, Figure
3.20 shows that the percentage of damage increases
gradually as the peak ground acceleration increases.
Conventional fragility curves shows that the
Muzon-Baritan Bridge will only have a 6%
probability of exceedance for complete damage (A s)
at safety design of 0.4 PGA in both X and Y
direction. However, it also shows a 26% probability
of exceedance for slight damage (C) at safety design
in X-direction and 31% probability of exceedance for
slight damage at safety design in Y-direction.
Bounded Fragility curves for each damage
rank for both X and Y shows that the conventional
fragility curves (blue) is in between the upper bound
fragility curves (violet) and the lower bound fragility
curves (red). It means that the Muzon-Baritan Bridge
has a minimum and maximum percentage for

Fragility Curves shows that the MuzonBaritan Bridge is still safe at 0.4g under shear failure
mode. The possible explanation for the results that
was attained is because the structural plans that was
obtained is the rehabilitation plans and not the
original plans without also considering the other
factors that might affect the overall condition of the
bridge. But, the structure will have a significant
damage at 0.8g or more like that of the Japan
earthquakes. If retrofitting will happen in the future,
the range for probability of exceedance for each
damage rank can help for the decision making of the
most effective cost management plan.

5. CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION

In this research, a new method is developed
for seismic assessment which incorporates interval
uncertainty analysis that determines the bounds of
reliability of Muzon Baritan Bridge. In reality, it is
impossible that a certain structure will have a No
Damage effect caused by extreme earthquakes.
Although, the structure is still safe at 0.4g, the slight
to moderate damage is still significant when cost is to
be considered. Particularly, the cost for retrofitting
increases as the consideration for the level of damage
increases so that the probability of exceedance would
decrease.
No one can predict if large magnitude
earthquakes such as Kobe which has a magnitude of
6.9 (0.82g) and Tohoku-Kanto which has a
magnitude of 9 (2.99g) might occur in the Philippines
after many years from now. This research aims to
visualize what would structures such as Muzon-

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SEISMIC ASSESSMENT OF MUZON BARITAN BRIDGE USING FRAGILITY CURVES

Baritan Bridge would appear if Japan earthquake hit

the country.

6. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We, the researchers, would like to recognize
and express our gratitude first to Almighty God for
guiding us until the completion of the project.
We would not be able to make it without the
guidance and expertise of our thesis mentor, Engr.
Michael Baylon. We deeply appreciate his passion,
motivation, patience, and enthusiasm on our research.

Requiso, D. A. (2013). Seismic Fragility of

Transportation Lifeline Piers in the Philippines,
Under Confinement and Shear Failure. Manila,
Philippines.
Shinozuka, M., Feng, M. Q., Kim H., Uzawa, T., &
Ueda, T. (2001). Statistical analysis of Fragility
Curve. University of Southern California
Solidum, R. Jr. (2015). High Resolution West Valley
Fault Maps Launched. PHIVOLCS
Sunstar Archive (2014). Destructive Earthquake in
the
Philippines.
8. RESEARCHERS
Princess M. Alcantara
BS Civil Engineering
princessalcantara07@yahoo.com
09074537324

Besides, we would also like to thank our

thesis panelists and judges for their insightful
comments, recommendations and suggestions that
helped us to further enhance our study.
We are also deeply thankful to the DPWH
for trusting us with their plan.

Glerommie B. Castro
BS Civil Engineering
glerommie_castro@y.c
0906 971 4773

Lastly, we thank our respective parents for

the unconditional love and support they showed to us
throughout the entire project.

7. REFERENCES
Baylon, M.B. (2015) Reliability Analysis of Bridge
Pier Using Interval Uncertainty Analysis. A
Graduate Thesis. De La Salle University:
Manila.
Delfin II, B., De Veyra, N., Soriano, J., & Tuazon, A.
(2013). Rapid Assessment Report for the Effects
of the Earthquake in Bohol Province,
Philippines. Save the Children Assessment Team
Jiang, C., Lu, G.Y., Han, X., & Liu, L.X. (2012). A
New Reliability Analysis Method for Uncertain
Structures with Random and Interval Variables.
Karim, K.R., & Yamazaki, F. (2003). A Simplified
Method of Constructing Fragility Curves for
Highway Bridges. A Journal of Earthq Eng
Struct
Dyn., 32 (10) (2003), pp. 16031626
Karim K. R., and Yamazaki, F. (2001). Effect of
Earthquake Ground motion on Fragility
Curves of Highway bridge Piers Based on the
Numerical Simulation. University of Tokyo
Nowak, A.S., & Racokzy, A.M. (2013). Uncertainties
in the Building Process. Bulletin of the Polish
Academy of Sciences Technical Sciences. Vol. 61,
No. 1.

Marc Adrienne G. Marquez

BS Civil Engineering
marcadriennemarquez@y.c.
091510905099

````````

Kent Kevin N. Nieves

BS Civil Engineering
nieveskentkevin@gmail.com
09227568080

Mary Jane L. Sao

BS Civil Engineering
maryjhane13@yahoo.com
09369372946

9. ADVISER
Engr. Michael B. Baylon
Civil Engineering Faculty
University of the East
Caloocan Campus
ikingbalon@gmail.com

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SEISMIC ASSESSMENT OF MUZON BARITAN BRIDGE USING FRAGILITY CURVES