Open Issues in the Seismic Design and Assessment of Bridges

The chapter presents an overview of recent research on the seismic assessment/retrofit and design of bridges, focussing on some of the aspects which are still not adequately covered in the codes. These are: The level of protection to be provided when upgrading an existing bridge, and in particular whether this should be differentiated between new designs and retrofit of existing bridges; The appropriate methods of analysis and modelling, with emphasis on the scope of nonlinear static methods and to the problems related to the selection of the input for dynamic analysis; Soil-foundation-structure interaction and non uniform support input, representing two controversial issues that may be mature for an inclusion in routine bridge analysis.