Lateral/Seismic Design of Bridges comparing manual calcs versus FEM

[qasimcivil]

I wanted to ask Bridge Design Experts who deal with a lot of lateral/seismic design of bridges if they could recommend any reference material or sample whereby the seismic effects from the computer analysis (like Time Period, Base Shear, Plastic Moment, Demand/Capacity Ratio, etc.) are compared against hand calculations for AASHTO Code. I normally use the CSi Bridge Software and LARSA 4D and have also recently started using the MIDAS Civil Software and some of the other design software's like LEAP, CONSPAN, CONBIX, Merlin DASH, etc. I just wanted to reach out to see if there is a step-by-step comparison of a manual calculation of the seismic effects for various conditions (with foundation as spread footing, drilled shaft, piles or the sub structure as multi column bent versus shear wall, etc). Appreciate all help and guidance.

 

[KentBrockman]

As far as I know, your best bet is do a single mode or uniform static load analysis and compare it your model the next time you do a bridge seismic analysis. The 2019 WSDOT BDM (Appendix 4-B2) has a SAP2000 full model example that you can look at for model results.