Quality assessment of coupled partial models considering soil–structure coupling

Integral bridges are gaining more and more interest lately because they are associated with significant cost savings in building maintenance. However, the design of these bridges makes very high demands on the planners, which have to take into account many complex phenomena for the calculation and the design of such structure. In order to assess the reliability of the model prediction and to reduce the complexity of a calculation model in a reasonable manner, this article presents an evaluation method for the prediction quality of coupled partial models. Finally, this algorithm is applied to an example of a semi-integral concrete bridge structure. The evaluation method allows for the quantification of the prediction quality and, thus, to detect optimal as well as efficient model combinations for reliable predictions.