Advantages of Integral Abutments for Seismic Design of Bridges

Seismic assessment is an essential part of bridge design. With the design of integral abutments, it is possible to improve the behaviour of bridges - both newly designed and existing ones - under seismic action.An analysis of the advantages of integral bridges compared to traditional ones in terms of seismic assessment is presented and an example is given to demonstrate that integral bridges should be applied on a large scale for certain bridge parameters.