This paper puts forward an applied method for reliable performance-based seismic design of bridges founded on a design philosophy in which tolerable seismic loss is incorporated in the design decision process up front. The design of bridges based on current seismic design codes is prescriptive and targets a uniform seismic hazard level rather than a uniform risk (i.e., loss). The efficiency and flexibility of using cloud computing for PBD of bridges is emphasized. A case study to illustrate how the incremental dynamic analysis of a three-dimensional bridge with soil-structure interaction using parallel computing in clouds is presented and discussed. This paper shows how the significant reduction in the time required to process a suite of ground motions for PBD, and the flexibility of cloud computing in assigning tasks to different processor, allow bridge engineers to perform various types of sophisticated nonlinear analyses in parallel. Elasticity of cloud services provides engineers a platform to add and remove pay-as-you-go compute resources to meet the size and time requirements commensurate with the size and type of the bridge model being analyzed. A viable and cost-effective option to overcome computational limitations in high intensive PBD of bridges and soil-structure interactions, is to adopt cloud and parallel computing techniques in the analysis. The simulation of the nonlinear dynamic response of a bridge to various levels of earthquakes is a very challenging and tedious process, which requires significant computational capabilities. In order to have a realistic assessment of the performance of a bridge subjected to severe ground shaking, sophisticated three-dimensional nonlinear dynamic structural and geotechnical analyses need to be performed, that account not only for the structural characteristics, but also the ground conditions, the type of earthquake motions and the soil-structure-interaction. This paper shows how the Performance-based Design (PBD) of bridges is facilitated by taking advantage of recent developments in parallel and cloud computing.
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