• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.6 no.6
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• pp.17-24
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• 2002

Dynamic behaviors of a bridge system with several simple spans are evaluated to examine the effects of nonlinear abutment motions upon the seismic responses of the bridge. The idealized mechanical model for the whole bridge system is developed by adopting the multi-degree-of-freedom system, which can consider various influential components. To compare the results, both linear and nonlinear abutment-backfill models are prepared. The linear system has the constant abutment stiffness, and the nonlinear system has the nonlinear stiffness considering the abutment stiffness degradation due to the abutment-soil interaction. From simulation results, the nonlinear abutment motion is found to have an important influence upon the global bridge motions. Maximum relative distances between adjacent vibration units are found to be larger than those found from the linear system. In particular, maximum relative distances at the location with the highest possibility of unseating failure are increased up to about 30% in the nonlinear system. The effects of nonlinear behavior of an abutment on the bridge seismic behaviors are also increased as the number of span increase. Therefore, it can be concluded that the abutment-soil interaction should be considered in the seismic analysis of the bridge system.