Project:  Seismic Instrumentation System for Warning and Rapid Recovery

PI(s):  Mark Eberhard, Steve Kramer, and Pedro Arduino

Sponsor:  WSDOT

Objective:   To develop an instrumentation and data- processing plan to help engineers evaluate bridge performance following an earthquake. The Alaskan Way Viaduct (AWV) is the best candidate for a trial implementation, because the viaduct is critical to the region, University of Washington researchers have already studied its vulnerabilities, and its vulnerabilities stem from both its structural details and soil conditions. Also, the nature of the viaduct's vulnerabilities (in particular, liquefaction could cause collapse shortly after the end of the earthquake) suggests that an earthquake-triggered warning system could be developed to divert traffic prior to collapse.

Research Approach:   The Alaskan Way Viaduct (AWV) and other major bridges in Western Washington are known to be vulnerable to extreme earthquake motions, but the vulnerability of these bridges to less severe shaking is less well understood. If an earthquake were to occur in the Puget Sound area tomorrow, this uncertainty would force WSDOT engineers to make critical decisions about traffic diversion with inadequate information. Excessive conservatism would impose high economic costs and delay the recovery of the region, while excessive optimism would place the public at unnecessary risk. To make these critical decisions, engineers need to quickly access information about the performance of critical bridges and their underlying soils. To this end, several task will be accomplished:

a) Investigate Existing Earthquake Monitoring Systems.

b) Review Seismic Vulnerability of Alaskan Way Viaduct.

c) Perform Supplemental Liquefaction Analysis.

d) Development of Threshold Criteria for Inspection and Traffic Diversion.

e) Development of Instrumentation Plan.

f) Exploratory Study of Distributed Bridge Instrumentation Network.

For more information send E-Mail to: eberhard@u.washington.edu, kramer@u.washington.edu, or parduino@u.washington.edu