Ultimate limit states of bridge abutments
This paper deals with the capacity of bridge abutments, which is an important element for the evaluation of the seismic performance of bridges with integral or semi-integral abutments and yet has received little attention in the scientific literature. We evaluate the capacity of the system formed by the abutment structure, the foundation soil, and the approach embankment under multiaxial loading conditions based on a finite-element implementation of upper and lower bound theorems of plastic limit analysis.