The transport infrastructure was majorly affected by the 14th November 2016 Kaikōura Earthquake. Severe vertical and horizontal peak ground accelerations generated high inertial forces, land-slides, and liquefaction. Most of the bridges in the Hurunui, Malborough and Kaikōura districts were critical nodes to the railway and road networks. In total, 904 road bridges across those districts were affected. Two reached the life safety limit state, suffering severe damage, however, most of the affected bridges experienced only minor to moderate damage. This paper describes the structural performance of the most severely damaged bridges based on observations made from site inspections. In addition to this, several performance issues have arisen from this event and are posed in this paper, hopefully to be addressed in the near future.

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The damping of simply supported rubberized concrete beams was measured and compared against conventional concrete beams in their uncracked and cracked states. The variables controlled were: rubber content (10% and 20% by total volume of aggregates replaced), reinforcing content, axial load, and damage state. Impact hammer-induced free-vibration was used to excite the specimens and quasi-static four-point bending used to damage the beams.Rubberized concrete displayed a measurable increase in damping relative to ordinary concrete in both the uncracked and cracked states. It was found that reinforcing appears to reduce the damping of all beam specimens in their undamaged state compared to unreinforced counterparts. No relationship was found between reinforcing ratio and damping. For crack widths up to 0.1 mm a nonlinear monotonic increase in damping was observed. Damping measured throughout the entire pushover response of the beams was found to follow a skewed-shaped bell curve. Compressive axial load was found to reduce the damping of the beams. The shape of the free vibration decay envelopes was examined. Rubber was found to make the damping response more viscous-like.Whilst reinforcing made the shapes of the decay curves more similar between beams made of different concrete types. No clear evidence for friction damping due to cracking was found. For all beams, based on the free-vibration response, it was found that the damping exhibited by both plain and reinforced concrete is not a true exponential decay curve. This means that the damping calculated by the logarithmic decrement method will depend on the choice of interval selected. A method for standardizing the implementation of the logarithmic decay method to avoid arbitrary choices of intervals and allow for fairer crossstudy comparison of damping values was therefore proposed. K E Y W O R D Sdamping, free-vibration, post-tensioned concrete, reinforced concrete, rubberized concrete, vibration Discussion on this paper must be submitted within two months of the print publication. The discussion will then be published in print, along with the authors' closure, if any, approximately nine months after the print publication.

<p>This design concept originated in response to a government-sponsored design contest for a ‘North Frame Pedestrian Bridge'. The bridge, located along the Ōtākaro / Avon River in Christchurch, New Zealand, is one of a series of projects contributing to post-earthquake recovery for a rebuilding city that seeks to attract people to visit and live, while retaining its unique identity. The contest stipulated that engineers and artists must collaborate to produce the design.</p> <p>In response, the University of Canterbury established a design team of senior Engineering and Fine Arts students, supervised by three professors. The brief required the team to combine a strong design aesthetic with a tightly constrained and functional built object. This resulted in a unique design, fitting for inclusion in the public art collection, whilst also being capable of moving pedestrians and cyclists safely and effectively over the river.</p> <p>The design speaks to Christchurch's post-earthquake rebuild on many levels. For example, referencing the pre-colonial river by embodying the Māori eel trap form (the hīnaki), yet, composed of post-colonial modern materials. With its implications of constraint and sustenance, it conceptually encourages the viewer to pause and consider the relationship between the natural, spiritual and human worlds.</p> <p>The structural system, based on a weathering steel tridimensional “Vierendeel” girder/truss, also responds to the artistic form of a traditional Māori fishing net. Both truss and trap are made of repeated rings, of variable size, and connected by an organic net. As the design is currently under tender, further details of the design concept will be revealed after the bid disclosure.</p>