| The Japanese design specifications for highway bridges were revised in 2012. Main points of the revision for seismic design are (1) revision of the design earthquake ground motion corresponding to interplate earthquakes such as the 2011 great east Japan earthquake, (2) introduction of design considerations for extreme events such as tsunami, large-scale land slide, fault movement, etc, (3) introduction of requirements for seismic structural members of bridges, (4) revision of the ductility design method for reinforced concrete bridge columns in order to improve the accuracy of evaluation of ductility capacity, and (5) revision of the unseating prevention measures of bridge superstructures considering unseating scenarios after failure of the bearing supports. This paper introduces the outline of the revisions of specifications as well as background, lessons learned from the recent extreme earthquakes and the research accomplishments related to the revisions. |
