• International Journal of Railway
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.10-21
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• 2012

Open steel plate girder (OPSG) bridges are the most prevalent railroad bridge type in Korea, constituting about 40% of all railroad bridges. Solid steel bearings, known as line type bearings, are placed in most OSPG railway bridges. However, the line type rigid bearings generate several problems with the bridge's dynamic behavior and maintenance in service. To compare and investigate the dynamic behaviors of line type, spherical and disk bearings, the vertical displacements of each bearing, including fixed and expansion type, under running vehicles are measured and analyzed. The displacements of disk and spherical bearings are measured after replacing the line type bearings with spherical and disk bearings. This study also analyzed dynamic behaviors of bridges. Furthermore, the deformation of the PTFE (Polytetrafluoroethylene) plate that is placed inside of expansion type spherical and disk bearings is measured and its effect on the dynamic behavior of the bridges is discussed. The up-lift phenomenon at the bearings installed for the steel bridges is estimated. The vertical displacements at mid-span of the bridges are compared according to the bearing types. Finally, the 1st mode natural frequencies are estimated, and the relationship to the vertical displacement is discussed.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.26 no.1A
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• pp.173-181
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• 2006

Many isolated bridges are designed and constructed after the introduction of the seismic design. However those bridges designed in engineering fields have unnecessarily high serviceability limit and brittle failure mechanism, which do not satisfy the seismic design concept. Such design results are due to the excessive substructure stiffness of the conventional design method as well as the misunderstanding of the seismic design method. In this study an isolated bridge designed with the conventional design method is selected and the same bridge with steel bearings is modelled for the comparative seismic design. From the comparison, the seismic design procedures satisfying the required performance levels are provided for the two bridges. It is confirmed that the isolated bridge requires more complicated design procedure with trial and error methods and reanalyses but provides higher serviceability limit compared to the bridge with steel bearings. However, because the required serviceability limit can also be obtained by adjusting substructure stiffness, it is a resonable seismic design process that an isolated bridge is to be considered as an alternative design when the ductile failure mechanism is not obtained with a bridge with steel bearings.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.755-763
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• 2002

Multispan simply supported bridges and multispan continuous bridges take a large portion of bridges in Central and Southeastern United Sates. The superstructure of the bridges are supported by steel rocker bearings. In general, the rocker bearings are modeled with ideal rollers or Coulomb fricition in seismic analysis. However, the rocker bearings have rocking action on pintles after rolling some distance. This rocking action may have considerable effect on the seismic performance of bridges. This study compares the effect of expansion rocker bearings models on a multispan simply supported and a multispan continuous bridge. Since the ideal roller model produces larger responses than the rocking model, its use is undesirable. However, the fricition and hardening model does not have much difference from the responses of the rocking model. In addition, the use of the tow models is convenient in seismic analyses of bridges. Although the rocking model can obtain more exact responses, its behavior is complicated and it may induce the conversion problem in time history analysis because it includes the abrupt changing of stiffiness. The friction and hardening model of expansion rocker bearings is therefore recommended in sesismic analysis.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.437-446
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• 2006

Open-steel-plate-girder(OSPG) bridges are one of the most prevalent bridge types among Korean railway bridges. They account for about 40% of all Korean railway bridges. However, the line-type bearings used for OSPG bridges generate several problems with respect to the bridges' dynamic behavior and maintenance. The replacement of the existing bearings with polyurethane disk bearings could be a possible solution to this problem. This type of disk bearing is an elastic bearing using a polyurethane disk. This study estimated the variations in the natural frequency of a bridge when disk bearings were installed and the bridge's dynamic behavior with a running locomotive and running trains. The first natural frequency of the bridge was 3% lower than that of the as-built bridge after the installation of the disk lower, respectively. Also, the second and third frequencies were 7 and 15% lower, respectively. The disk bearings increased the vertical displacement of the bridge, but the pure displacement, excluding the disk deformation, did not vary. The vertical acceleration did not increase when the disk bearing was installed, with trains running. The shear pin in the disk bearing reduced the lateral displacement and the acceleration of the bridge.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Railway
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.165-175
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• 2008

Line type rigid bearings for Open-Steel-Plate-Girder railway bridges have several problems in service, and they are unstable structurally. A series of lateral resistance tests were performed for a retrieved line type bearing. A spherical bearing with advanced maintenance-capability and a device to resist the up-lift was developed and replaced the existing ones. An experiment of maintenance for a new spherical bearing under real Open-Steel-Plate-Girder bridge was conducted and their good maintenance performance was proved. Also, a test against up-lift was performed for the bearing. The dynamic behavior of the bridge was measured and analyzed for the two cases of the existing and replaced bearings. Therefore, the suitability of the new spherical bearings on the railway bridge was improved.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.30 no.5A
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• pp.399-406
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• 2010

In this paper, the optimization of frictional bearings that applied to improve the seismic performance of conventional bridges were conducted. The nonlinear dynamic analysis of steel bridges and concrete bridges are carried out with the El Centro and artificial earthquake motions, and the reponses of the bridges were optimized by genetic algorithm. The object functions were considered with two parameters, such as shear forces and displacements at bearing, and the optimum object functions were searched by varying the weighting factors of the two parameters. As results, in case of the steel bridges, the optimum results were obtained when larger weight factor was imposed to the shear force. However, in case of concrete bridges, larger weight factor was need to the displacement for optimum results.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2005.05a
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• pp.568-573
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• 2005

To the installed CWR (Continuously Welded Rail) on steel plate girder bridges without ballast, shoes were replaced by the shoe for reduced axial force. During 9 months, from summer to winter, expansion by a temperature on girders, axial forces by a temperature on CWR, etc. are tested and the results are evaluated. Also, with the numerical analysis, the results - axial forces by a temperature on CWR, deformations of girders, etc. are compared and evaluated. From the longitudinal displacement on girders, occurred by run of trains, because of looking for the stability, the bearings for reducing axial forces are applied to the railway bridges. It is verified that the bearings for reducing axial forces disperse the axial forces by a temperature from the measurement of the forces on CWR of plate girder bridges,.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.207-212
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• 2015

Bridges are designed and constructed as infrastructures in order to overcome topographical obstructions for fast and smooth transfer of human/material resources. Therefore the shape and size of piers constructed along the longitudinal bridge axis should be restricted by topographical conditions. Action forces of connections and piers are affected by pier shapes and sizes together with connection arrangement which decides load carrying path under earthquakes. In this study a typical bridge is modelled with steel bearings and reinforced concrete piers and seismic analyses are performed with analysis models with different arrangement of steel bearings and piers. From analysis results ductile failure mechanisms for all analysis models are checked based on strength/action force ratios of steel bearings and pier columns. In this way the influences of arrangement of connections and piers on the earthquake resistant capacity of typical bridges are figured out in view of forming ductile failure mechanism.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.85 no.2
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• pp.265-274
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• 2023

The spherical steel bearings (SSBs) has been gradually replaced traditional rubber bearings and extensively applied to high-speed railway (HSR) bridges in China, due to their durability and serviceability. Nevertheless, SSB is generally simplified to the ordinary constraints in the finite element model, which cannot reflect its detailed mechanical characteristics, especially its seismic performance. To provide a more precisely simulation, an innovative and simplified finite element simulation method is proposed and the combined element group is developed in ANSYS. The primary parameters were determined by means of the performance test of SSB. The finite element model of SSB applied to a single-span HSR simply supported girder bridge was established through the proposed method. The seismic performance of the SSB was further investigated. A shake table test was conducted to evaluate the accuracy of the proposed simulation method. It is found that the numerical results could have a good agreement with the experiment, namely, the proposed method is feasible and efficient.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.16 no.1 s.68
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• pp.145-153
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• 2004

Conventional lead-rubber bearings may be unstable in case of strong ground motions. To address this problem, this paper proposed a new concept of isolation device wherein shape memory alloy wires were incorporated in an elastomeric bearing. A three-span continuous steel bridge was used for seismic analyses to compare the performance of lead-rubber and proposed bearings. The proposed bearings showed almost the same performance as the lead-rubber bearings. In particular, the proposed bearings limited relative displacement effectively with strong ground motions and recovered its original undeformed shape.