Abstract

Chile is exposed to the occurrence of medium- and large-magnitude earthquakes. As a result, national and international design codes have been developed, whose objectives are to grant an ideal behavior to the structures. However, in Chile, many of these structures do not comply with the design and construction standards of current regulations. Therefore, we propose to carry out a historical compilation that allows establishing the components that present the seismic vulnerability in bridges built from 1920 to 2010. We explored information gathered from the Government of Chile. We analyzed 553 bridges out of a total of 6835, considering superstructure and infrastructure components and seismic design evolution. The analysis emphasizes the elements that help improve the seismic performance of a bridge when natural or induced dynamic forces act on it, such as the length support, elastomeric bearing, seismic hold-down bars, transverse girders, seismic stoppers, bracing, and expansion joints. We identified that the most significant problems in bridges are the lack of seismic stoppers, both interior and exterior; lack of development length in the support tables; use of deficient expansion joints; and the inefficient construction of cross girders and baring support; in addition to the presence of differential settlements in elements of the infrastructure.