Reliability assessment of isolated bridges by HDRB

Bridges are important components of the transportation network and their effectiveness is very much suitable during seismic events. Owing to the catastrophic damage observed as result of strong earthquakes on bridges, investigation. studies in the last decades have been focused on methods able to improve their stability and reliability. Therefore, as response of failing inherent on conventional seismic design methods, non-traditional ones have been developed intended to prevent or reducing inelastic deformations in bridge structures. For this reason a great effort has been made in this field to introduce passive vibration control devices with the consequence of improving bridges performances against seismic events, and avoiding at the same time significant costs increments. In this study, performances of HDRB in the bridges isolation are assessed in detail, the reliability evaluated as the first passage probability is calculated and a sensitivity analysis is carried out to find isolator parameters which allow high performances of this technique to be reached