Lateral/Seismic Design of Bridges comparing manual calcs versus FEM

[Bridge_Eng]

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.

 

[triops1996]

FEM software usually have a "Verification Manual" where the software developer checks the output against that of hand calculations.

Some of these are step-by-step, some just show the results of the hand calcs and you have to trust they were done correctly.

You can request the verification manual from the developer if it wasn't included in the installation of the program. I know LARSA has one, not sure about other softwares.

This is probably the closest to what you're looking for outside of random research papers.