Effect of thermal regime on the seismic response of a dry bridge in a permafrost region along the Qinghai-Tibet Railway

Dry bridges have been widely applied in the Qinghai-Tibet Railway (QTR) to minimize the thermal disturbance of engineering to the permafrost. However, because the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is an area with a high potential occurrence of earthquakes, seismic action can easily destroy the dry bridges. Therefore, a three-dimensional numerical model, with consideration of the soil-pile interactions, is established to investigate the thermal characteristics and their impact on the seismic response of the dry bridge in permafrost region along the QTR. The numerical results indicate that there exist significant differences in the lateral displacement, shear force, and bending moment of the piles in different thermal conditions under seismic action. When the active layer become from unfrozen to frozen state, the maximum displacement of the bridge pile reduces, and the locations of the zero and peak values of the shear force and bending moment also change. It is found that although the higher stiffness of frozen soil confines the lateral displacement of the pile, compared with unfrozen soil, it has an adverse effect on the earthquake energy dissipation capacity.