Design of sustainable and resilient geotechnical infrastructure for transportation systems

最近的地震中，由于地面运动、土壤液化和相关的横向扩展，桥梁和地下结构遭到严重破坏。新的《2020年加拿大国家建筑规范》规定，加拿大大多数主要城市的地震危险性大幅增加。特别是，不列颠哥伦比亚省和魁北克市-蒙特利尔-渥太华走廊地震活跃。因此，建筑环境的可持续性和复原力变得越来越重要和令人担忧。关键基础设施的完整性在很大程度上取决于其基础的性能。拟议的研究计划旨在为基础设施项目开发可持续和有弹性的深基础和地下结构，这些基础设施项目将承受环境危害并节省资源。该研究将开发，测试和分析公路和道路基础设施的弹性和可持续基础和埋地结构，并评估不同深基础和埋地结构的抗震性能。这项研究将使用新的振动台试验和最先进的新建立的西方岩土工程师。此外，还将对创新桩方案进行全面测试，并制定设计指南。特别是，本研究将研究开发创新的灌浆螺旋桩，可以为桥梁基础设施提供高效和弹性的基础选项，并研究用于道路和公路基础设施的高效预制三面钢筋混凝土（TSRC）涵洞，并为其设计制定具体的指导方针。这一点尤其重要，因为根据加拿大公路桥梁设计规范（CHBDC）的规定，目前用于设计的做法将TSRC涵洞与传统箱形涵洞相同，这导致设计过于保守和昂贵。制定的设计指南将提交给相关的CHBDC委员会，以考虑将其纳入下一版本的规范。研究亦会探讨螺旋桩及压力灌浆螺旋桩的抗震性能。这项研究的结果将使桥梁工程师能够使用这些基础选项来支持加拿大地震活跃地区的桥梁和其他交通基础设施。此外，将使用基于机器学习的方法分析桩承桥梁的地震响应。这将导致量化地震中的损害和地震后受损桥梁的运营承载能力。这些结果可以帮助运输机构在地震后立即分配损坏标签，以供公众认知（例如，绿色、黄色和红色标签分别表示完全运行、限制运行和关闭）。预计这项研究计划将有利于许多新的基础设施项目和评估现有的地震脆弱性。

Recent earthquakes have witnessed severe damage to bridges and buried structures due to ground motion, soil liquefaction and associated lateral spreading. The new 2020 National Building Code of Canada stipulates substantially increased seismic hazard across most major Canadian cities. In particular, British Columbia and the Quebec City-Montreal-Ottawa corridor are seismically active. Thus, the sustainability and resilience of the built environment have become increasingly important and of concern. Integrity of critical infrastructure relies substantially on the performance of their foundations. The proposed research program aims to develop sustainable and resilient deep foundations and buried structures for infrastructure projects, which will withstand environmental hazards and will save resources. This research will develop, test and analyze resilient and sustainable foundations and buried structures for highway and road infrastructure and will evaluate the seismic performance of different deep foundations and buried structures. The research will be accomplished using novel shake table testing and the state-of-the-art newly-established Western Geotechnical Centrifuge. In addition, full scale testing of innovative pile options and guidelines will be developed for their design. In particular, this research will investigate developing innovative grouted helical piles that can provide efficient and resilient foundation option for bridge infrastructure, and investigate an efficient precast three-sided reinforced concrete (TSRC) culverts for road and highway infrastructure and develop specific guidelines for their design. This is particularly important as the current practice used for design as specified in Canadian Highway Bridge Design Code (CHBDC) treats TSRC culverts same as the conventional box culverts, which results in overly conservative and expensive design. The developed design guidelines will be submitted to the relevant CHBDC committee for consideration of incorporating them in the next version of the code. The research will also investigate the seismic performance of helical piles and pressure grouted helical piles. The findings from this study will allow bridge engineers to use these foundation options to support bridges and other transportation infrastructure in seismic active regions across Canada. In addition, the seismic response of pile-supported bridges will be analyzed using machine learning-based approach. This will lead to quantifying the in-earthquake damage and post-earthquake carrying capacity of damaged bridges for operations. These results can assist transport agencies to assign damage tags immediately after the earthquake for public cognition (e.g., green, yellow and red tags for full operation, limited operation, and close, respectively). It is anticipated that this research program will benefit many new infrastructure projects and assessing the seismic vulnerability of existing ones.