In order to effectively simulate the nonlinear hysteresis behavior of reinforced concrete (RC) bridge piers under strong earthquake excitation, an improved nonlinear hysteresis model for RC bridge piers was developed and its controlling parameters were determined considering stiffness and strength degradation and pinching effect based on classical Bouc-Wen model. The improved model can be carried out to predict the nonlinear hysteresis behavior of RC bridge piers under various failure modes using MATLAB/ Simulink program. Cyclic tests of different failure mode bridge column specimens were performed under constant axial load with lateral bending. The results did show that force-displacement relationship curves of bridge column specimens derived from theoretical analysis agree well with experimental results. The nonlinear hysteresis behavior of bridge column specimen was simulated under 2008 Wenchuan earthquake excitation and its failure modes were identical with real earthquake damage of bridge column. The improved analytical models in the paper were applied to accurately predicting the nonlinear hysteresis behavior of RC bridge columns with strength and stiffness degradations and the pinching effect subjected to strong earthquake motion. Unscented Kalman filter (UKF) was applied to estimate the parameters of Bouc-Wen model in this paper, the simulation results and error analysis show that the method can accurately estimate the parameters of improved Bouc-Wen model.