• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.68 no.5
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• pp.563-573
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• 2018

Temperature-induced responses, such as strains and displacements, are related to the boundary conditions. Therefore, it is required to determine the boundary conditions to establish a reliable bridge model for temperature-induced responses analysis. Particularly, bridge bearings usually present nonlinear behavior with an increase in load, and the nonlinear boundary conditions cause significant effect on temperature-induced responses. In this paper, the bridge nonlinear boundary conditions were simulated as bilinear translational or rotational springs, and the boundary parameters of the bilinear springs were identified based on the measured temperature-induced responses. First of all, the temperature-induced responses of a simply support beam with nonlinear translational and rotational springs subjected to various temperature loads were analyzed. The simulated temperature-induced strains and displacements were assumed as measured data. To identify the nonlinear translational and rotational boundary parameters of the bridge, the objective function based on the temperature-induced responses is then created, and the nonlinear boundary parameters were further identified by using the nonlinear least squares optimization algorithm. Then, a beam structure with nonlinear translational and rotational springs was simulated as a numerical example, and the nonlinear boundary parameters were identified based on the proposed method. The numerical results show that the proposed method can effectively identify the parameters of the nonlinear boundary conditions. Finally, the boundary parameters of a real arch bridge were identified based on the measured strain data and the proposed method. Since the bearings of the real bridge do not perform nonlinear behavior, only the linear boundary parameters of the bridge model were identified. Based on the bridge model and the identified boundary conditions, the temperature-induced strains were recalculated to compare with the measured strain data. The recalculated temperature-induced strains are in a good agreement with the real measured data.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.317-327
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• 2019

High-speed railway bridge piers in seismically active area may be subjected to multiple earthquakes and then produce cumulative residual deformation. To study the cumulative residual deformation of high-speed railway bridge piers under multiple earthquakes, a nonlinear numerical analytical model with multi-DOF (MDOF) system is presented and validated against two shaking table tests in this paper. Based on the presented model, a simple supported beam bridge pier model of high-speed railway is established and used to investigate the cumulative residual deformation of high-speed railway bridge pier under mainshock-aftershock sequences and swarm type seismic sequences. The results show that the cumulative residual deformation of the bridge pier increases with earthquake number, and the increasing rates are different under different earthquake number. The residual deformation of bridge pier subjected to multiple earthquakes is accumulated and may exceed the limit of code.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.27-38
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• 1999

Cables are used in many applications such as cable-stayed bridges, suspension bridges, transmission lines, telephone lines, etc. Generally, the linear relationship is inadequate to present the behavior of cable structure. In finite element analysis, cables have always been modeled as truss elements. For these types of model, the nonlinear behavior of cables has been always ignored. In order to investigate the importance of the nonlinear effect on the structural system, the effect of cable stiffness has been studied. The nonlinear behavior of cable is due to its sag. Therefore, the cable pretension provides a large portion of the inherent stiffness. Since a cable-stayed bridge has numerous degrees of freedom, analytical methods at present are not convenient to solve this type of structures but numerical methods may be feasible. It is necessary to provide a different and more representative analytical model in order to present the effect of cable stiffness on cable-stayed bridges in numerical analysis. The characteristics of cable deformation have also been well addressed. A formulation of modified modulus of elasticity has been proposed using a numerical parametric study. In order to investigate realistic bridges, a cable-stayed bridge having the geometry similar to that of Quincy Bayview Bridge is considered. The numerical results indicate that the characteristics of the cable stiffness are strongly nonlinear. It also significantly affects the structural behaviors of cable-stayed bridge systems.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.65 no.5
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• pp.633-644
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• 2018

This paper presents the results of an assessment of the seismic fragility of a long, curved multi-frame bridge under multi-support earthquake excitations. To achieve this aim, the numerical model of columns retrofitted with elliptical steel jackets was developed and validated using existing experimental results. A detailed nonlinear numerical model of the bridge that can capture the inelastic response of various components was then created. Using nonlinear time-history analyses for a set of stochastically generated spatially variable ground motions, component demands were derived and then convolved with new capacity-based limit state models to obtain seismic fragility curves. The comparison of failure probabilities obtained from uniform and multi-support excitation analyses revealed that the consideration of spatial variability significantly reduced the median value of fragility curves for most components except for the abutments. This observation indicates that the assumption of uniform motions may considerably underestimate seismic demands. Moreover, the spatial correlation of ground motions resulted in reduced dispersion of demand models that consequently decreased the dispersion of fragility curves for all components. Therefore, the spatial variability of ground motions needs to be considered for reliable assessment of the seismic performance of long multi-frame bridge structures.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.82 no.2
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• pp.191-204
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• 2022

A three-mass vehicle model including one rigid mass and two unsprung masses is adopted to predict the vehicle-bridge interaction (VBI) and to establish the nonlinear coupled governing equations. To overcome the numerical instability and large computation problems concerning the vehicle-bridge system, the perturbation method is used to convert the nonlinear coupled governing equations into a set of linear uncoupled equations. Formulas for bridge's natural frequencies considering both the VBI and the dynamic responses of bridge and vehicle are proposed. Compared with the numerical results obtained by the Newmark-β method, the theoretical solutions for natural frequencies and dynamic responses are validated. The effects of the important factors of unsprung mass, vehicle damping, surface irregularity on the natural frequencies and dynamic responses of bridge and vehicle are discussed, based on the theoretical solutions.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.259-278
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• 2008

This paper presents a nonlinear finite element procedure accounting for the effects of geometric as well as material nonlinearities for reinforced concrete bridge piers supported by laminated rubber bearings. Reinforced concrete bridge piers supported by laminated rubber bearings and carrying a cyclic load were analyzed by using a special purpose, nonlinear finite element program, RCAHEST. For reinforced concrete, the proposed robust nonlinear material model captures the salient response characteristics of the bridge piers under cyclic loading conditions and addresses with the influence of geometric nonlinearity on post-peak response of the bridge piers by transformations between local and global systems. Seismic isolator element to predict the behaviors of laminated rubber bearings is also developed. The seismic performance of reinforced concrete bridge piers supported by laminated rubber bearings is assessed analytically. The results show good correlation between the experimental findings and numerical predictions, and demonstrate the reliability and robustness of the proposed analytical model. Additionally, the studies and discussions presented in this investigation provide an insight into the key behavioral aspects of reinforced concrete bridge piers supported by laminated rubber bearings.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.391-399
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• 2019

Residual deformation of high-speed railway bridge piers is cumulative under repeated earthquakes, and influences the safety and ride comfort of high-speed trains. This paper investigates the effects of the peak ground acceleration, longitudinal reinforcement ratio, and axial compression ratio on the cumulative deformation through finite element analysis. A simply-supported beam bridge pier model is established using nonlinear beam-column elements in OpenSees, and validated against a shaking table test. Repeated earthquakes were input in the model. The results show that the cumulative deformation of the bridge piers under repeated earthquakes increases with the peak ground acceleration and the axial compression ratio, and decreases with the longitudinal reinforcement ratio.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.691-704
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• 2019

This study simulates the responses of large-scale bridge piers under pseudo-dynamic tests to investigate the performance of four types of numerical models that consider the nonlinear behavior of the pier and the rocking behavior of the footing. In the models, beam-column elements with plastic hinges are used for the pier, two types of foundation models (rotational spring and distributed spring models) are adopted for the footing behavior, and two types of viscous damping models (Rayleigh and dashpot models) are applied for energy dissipation. Results show that the nonlinear pier model combined with the distributed spring-dashpot foundation model can reasonably capture the behavior of the piers in the tests. Although the commonly used rotational spring foundation model adopts a nonlinear moment-rotation property that reflects the effect of footing uplift, it cannot suitably simulate the hysteretic moment-rotation response of the footing in the dynamic analysis once the footing uplifts. In addition, the piers are susceptible to cracking damage under strong seismic loading and the induced plastic response can provide contribution to earthquake energy dissipation.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2010.06a
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• pp.1478-1485
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• 2010

In this paper, the nonlinear dynamic response of Vehicle-Bridge interaction with the coupled equations of motion including nonlinear Hertzian contact is presented. The moving train model is chosen to have 10 degrees of freedom (DOF). The bridge is modeled as 2D Euler-Bernoulli beam element with 4 DOF for each element, two for rotations and another two for translations. The nonlinear Hertzian contact is used to simulate the interaction between vehicle and bridge. Base on the relationship of wheel displacement of the vehicle and the vertical displacement of the bridge in Hertzian contact, the coupled equations of motion of the whole system is derived. The convenient formulation was encoded into a computer program. The contact forces, contact area and stress of the rail surface were also computed. The accuracy and efficiency of the proposed program are verified and compared with exact analytical solution and other previous studies. Various numerical examples and parametric studies have demonstrated the versatility and applicability of the proposed program.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.75-84
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• 2020

The aerostatic stability analysis of a long-span suspension bridge by the Element-free Galerkin (EFG) method is presented in this paper. Nonlinear effects due to wind structure interactions should be taken into account in determining the aerostatic behavior of long-span suspension bridges. The EFG method is applied to investigate torsional divergence of suspension bridges, based on both the three components of wind loads and nonlinearities of structural geometric. Since EFG methods, which are based on moving least-square (MLS) interpolation, require only nodal data, the description of the geometry of bridge structure and boundaries consist of defining a set of nodes. A numerical example involving the three-dimensional EFG model of a suspension bridge with a span length of 888m is presented to illustrate the performance and potential of this method. The results indicate that presented method can effectively be applied for modeling suspension bridge structure and the computed results obtained using present modeling strategy for nonlinear suspension bridge structure under wind flow are encouragingly acceptable.