Probability of collapse of a bridge system under seismic and scour hazards

For a bridge pier, scour is the formation of a hole around the pier, which reduces the carrying capacity of the foundation and may cause a bridge system to fail. Once a scour hole is formed around the pier, it may last permanently. The scoured soil foundation bridge system may be subject to earthquake loads. The combined hazards may reduce the life of the bridge more significantly compared to a single hazard. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the reliability of a bridge under the combination of seismic and scour hazards. In this research, a probabilistic framework is proposed to investigate the cumulative collapse probability of a scoured bridge system under seismic loads. Numerical experiments were employed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework.