Seismic Response Analysis of Urban Highway Viaducts Under Multiple Vehicles Subjected To Strong Earthquakes

Abstract eng:
This paper is intended to investigate the effect of vehicles on seismic responses of urban highway viaducts under strong earthquakes. Bridge design codes in most countries do not consider vehicle load in the seismic design because of the low probability of encountering critical vehicle load and earthquake simultaneously. However, considering high probability of traffic jam in urban areas of earthquake prone countries it must be clarified what is the effect of vehicles to seismic responses of bridges. Unfortunately very few researches have noted seismic responses of bridges under traffic during strong earthquakes. Therefore in this study, the vehicles parked on a highway viaduct were considered as dynamic system and were treated as structural members of the bridge model to investigate the effect of vehicles on seismic responses of the viaduct. Validity of the approach that considers vehicles as a part of structural members of the bridge model is verified by comparing with the result from the analysis of vehicle-bridge interaction under strong earthquakes. In the seismic response analysis, three different scenarios were considered to investigate influences of vehicles on the bridge to seismic responses of the bridge under strong earthquakes: i.e. the scenario without considering vehicles; the scenario considering vehicles as additional mass; and finally the scenario considering vehicles as dynamic system. A nonlinear rotational spring was adopted to model the base of bridge piers.

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