In the design of reinforced concrete (RC) bridges, the random and nonlinear behavior of soil may lead to insufficient reliability levels. For this reason, it is necessary to take into account the variability of soil properties which can significantly affect the bridge behavior regarding ultimate and serviceability limit states. This study investigates the failure probability for existing reinforced concrete bridges due to the effects of interaction between the soil and the structure. In this paper, a coupled reliability-mechanical approach is developed to study the effect of soil-structure interaction for RC bridges. The modeling of this interaction is incorporated into the mechanical model of RC continuous beams, by considering nonlinear elastic soil stiffness. The reliability analysis highlights the large importance of soil-structure interaction and shows that the structural safety is highly sensitive to the variability of soil properties, especially when the nonlinear behavior of soil is considered. Ó 2015 Faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Lifetime service of Reinforced Concrete (RC) structures is of major interest. It depends on the action of the superstructure and the response of soil contact at the same time. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the soil-structure interaction in the safety analysis of the RC structures to ensure reliable and economical design. In this paper, a finite element model of soil-structure interaction is developed. This model addresses the effect of long-term soil deformations on the structural safety of RC structures. It is also applied to real RC structures where soil-structure interaction is considered in the function of time. The modeling of the mechanical analysis of the soil-structure system is implemented as a one-dimensional model of a spring element to simulate a real case of RC continuous beams. The finite element method is used in this model to address the nonlinear time behavior of the soil and to calculate the consolidation settlement at the support-sections and the bending moment of RC structures girders. Numerical simulation tests with different loading services were performed on three types of soft soils with several compressibility parameters. This is done for homogeneous and heterogeneous soils. The finite element model of soil-structure interaction provides a practical approach to show and to quantify; (1) the importance of the variability of the compressibility parameters, and (2) the heterogeneity soil behavior in the safety RC structures assessment. It also shows a significant impact of soil-structure interaction, especially with nonlinear soil behavior versus the time on the design rules of redundant RC structures. Doi: 10.28991/cej-2020-03091618 Full Text: PDF