Precast segmental piers: testing, modeling and seismic assessment of an emulative connection based on a grouted central tenon.

Nowadays precast reinforced concrete (PRC) piers have found increasing application in bridge project, due to their favourable advantages such as significant improvement in quality, reduction in construction period, less environmental impact and traffic disturbance. Seismic performance of PRC piers highly depends on the design and detailing of the pier-foundation connection. Due to limited knowledge, the application of PRC piers is restricted to low-seismic regions while is rarely in high-seismic regions. In this paper, an emulative connection method is proposed for PRC piers which combines conventional grouted splice sleeves (GSS) for the longitudinal bar splice and a grouted central tenon (GCT). To begin with, a cyclic pseudo-static experiment was performed on three piers to evaluate the seismic performance, including one CIP pier, two PRC piers with the conventional GSS and proposed GSS-GCT connections, respectively. It was found that the GSS-GCT connection could be an effective solution since it apparently increased the lateral load and energy dissipation capacities and reduced the residual displacement. Moreover, inspired by the shear-induced slip observed during the test, a fiber-based finite element model is developed for PRC piers, which is, first-of-its-kind, capable of accounting for cyclic rebar bond-slip degradation, dowel action and friction. Good agreements are obtained between the numerical and experimental results. Finally, the superior seismic performance of the proposed method is confirmed by the capacity response spectrum method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]