Effect of site condition on the seismic response of a fixed-end deck steel arch bridge and the feasibility of the

pushover method
Chengyu Liang Airong Chen
Department of Bridge Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, China Smart Engineering Consultants, LTD., Taipei, Taiwan Department of Bridge Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, China

ABSTRACT: The elasto-plastic earthquake response of a 200m steel arch bridge with a fixed-end deck, was investigated under different input wave types. The effect of ground type on earthquake response is discussed in this paper. A pushover analysis was also carried out on the bridge and the location of the damage to the arch rib exposed to the earthquake and the results were compared against those of the elasto-plastic dynamic analysis. The results show that the seismic damage to the long span deck steel arch bridge was less serious when found in good alluvial ground and rock due to the longer natural period of the structure. The arch springing is prone to damage under strong earthquakes. In addition, the pushover analysis was found to be feasible in reproducing the seismic damage location, and the acting modes have little effect on the results.

INTRODUCTION

Construction site conditions not only affect propagation properties of a seismic wave but also change vibration characteristics of the structure and the dynamic input of the earthquake due to interactions between the ground and the structure,. Therefore, in bridge design for earthquake resistance, the effect of site condition on seismic structural response should be considered. A large amount of research related to seismic resistance of steel arch bridge has already been carried out, especially in Japan due to the frequent earthquakes. As an example, Nonaka et al.( J. Sakai and K. Kawashima 2003) performed an elastic-plastic seismic analysis on a half-through steel arch bridge by using fiber elements and investigated the plastic zone development in the cross-section due to earthquake and its effect on the seismic structural response. Nonaka et al.( T. Nonaka and A. Ali 2001) further investigated the seismic response of a fixed-end deck steel arch bridge and discussed the use of dampers to mitigate the effect of earthquake load. Through experiments, Morishita (T. Nonaka, T. Usami and H. Yoshino 2003) investigated steel arch bridge behavior and found that the dampers used had mitigated the earthquake effect for this type of bridge. On the other hand, Sakai et al.( K. Morishita, K. Inoue and K. Kawashima 2004) used a computational model accounting for the effect of axial force to analyze the elastic-plastic seismic response of a concrete arch bridge and investigated the coupling effect of axial force and bending moment during earthquake. For the purpose of increasing the lateral resistance of the steel arch bridge to vibration, Usami et al.( T. Usami et al. 2004) made use of the fiber model to calculate the seismic response of the steel arch bridge, considering the effect of dampers. These investigations have contributed to the understanding of vibration resistance properties and fracture mechanisms of steel arch bridges due to earthquakes, but the comparative effects of earthquake wave input conditions on structural response have not been discussed. Arch bridges behave differently to simply supported and continuous beams in that vibration modes are more complex and that arch bridges have a greater influence on high order vibration modes. There is a coupling effect between the horizontal and vertical earthquake motions, and additional bending moments caused by structural deformation in the beam-column system. Under earthquake loading, the axial force in the arch rib can change due to curving and the

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moment-curvature relationship cannot be determined by the nonlinear history of the cross-section. The use of the pushover method to model the damage process of complicated structures has been widely used in the design of vibration resistant structures. This method of calculation does not require a dynamic seismic response analysis; its calculation process is simple; and it has the advantage of clearly identifying the damage process. This method has great potential to be used in the design of arch bridges for vibration resistance. Analyzing the effect of various loading conditions will be valuable to research relating to the feasibility of the pushover method. With the purpose of analyzing the effect of site conditions on the earthquake response of a steel arch bridge, this study used an exemplary project of a long span fixed-end deck steel arch bridge and adopted a calculation method for seismic structural response that incorporated the effect of nonlinearity to analyze the seismic structural response by inputting earthquake waves that are based on site conditions. The effect of various site conditions on the structural seismic resistance has been analyzed and compared. Based on the differences in the structural response, positions of damage, and the extent of damage, a discussion is provided to address the effect of site conditions on the earthquake resistance characteristics of a long-span steel arch bridge. Recommendations for design of a fixed-end deck steel arch bridge subjected to various site conditions are also given. Finally, a simple feasibility analysis of the pushover method is presented. 2 2.1 A COMPUTATION MODEL FOR THE BRIDGE & THE SEISMIC INPUT CONDITION Description of Bridge

The Da-Yu-Lin bridge in Taiwan is used as an example for this study. The details of this project have been presented in (Cheng-Yu Liang et al. 2009) and a brief description is given below.

Diaphragm plate

Longitudinal rib 19x150

Elliptical opening 460x760

Unit:m

(a)

(b)

Figure 1: Steel arch bridge model with span length of 200m: (a) Side View, (b) Cross-Section of Arch Rib

Fig.1 provides a side view of the Da-Yu-Lin Bridge.It is a fixed-end deck steel arch bridge with two hinges and a span of 200m. The girder length is 326m and the width of the bridge deck is 10m. The deck is made of a concrete plate supported by four steel I beams. The I beams are connected by bracings in the transverse direction. Two steel arch rib boxes are used on this bridge and are connected by lateral framing system. Each arch rib has a single box and a single cell cross-section with dimensions of 0.9m width 2.75m height. Aside from P3 and P14, the piers have square cross-sections of 0.8m0.8m and the steel plate has a thickness of 25mm. The vertical posts, P3 and P14, have a 1.2m1.2m square box-girder cross-section with a plate thickness of 32mm. The ends of posts P8 and P9 are rigidly connected to the girder and the arch rib. All the other posts are rigidly connected to the arch rib but are hinged at the main girder. The study on structural seismic responses was performed by modeling the arch bridge structure from P3~P14.

Arch rib central axis

Location of expansion joint

Location of expansion joint

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In order to compare the effects of different site conditions on the seismic response of the arch bridge, the sites were divided into 3 ground types: I, II, and III, where hard ground falls into Type I for , general ground falls into Type II, and soft ground falls into Type III.. In order that the seismic condition fed into the model could be representative of the prescribed resistance factor, the analysis was carried out using the same seismic resistant design conditions. The current seismic design specifications for highway bridges require that, for a large-span bridge, seismic waves are to be inputted into the seismic resistant foundations. For convenience, the specification for seismic design of Japanese highway bridges were used as the input for the model's seismic waves. In this way, several seismic loads have the same equivalent seismic strength and satisfy the same seismic requirement under various site conditions. Due to a larger damage power of a close-distance earthquake, the seismic wave inputs were selected from close-distance and shallow earthquakes. Fig.2(a), (b), and (c) show the inputted seismic wave forms of hard (I), general (II), and soft (III) site conditions respectively. Three different seismic waves were used for each site condition. The maximum acceleration for each wave is between 0.7-0.8g. Fig.3 shows the response spectrum for all seismic waves viscosity ratio is 5% with the horizontal axis, t denoting the period. The figures show all three waves of the same site condition as having the same acceleration response characteristics. The site characteristic periods for the three site types are 0.7s, 1.22s and 1.52s respectively.
10 A /m.s -2

10 5 0 -5 0 -10 10 5 0 -5 0 -10 10
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(b)

-10 10 A /m.s -2 5 0 -5 0 10 20 t /s 30 40

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(c) Figure 2 : Earthquake waves e : (a)Type I Site, (b)Type II Site, (c)Type III Site

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Figure 3 : Response spectrum of earthquake wave

3 THE STRUCTURAL COMPUTATION MODEL & ITS DYNAMIC CHARACTERISTICS 3.1 Bridge Model The seismic structural response was calculated by using ABAQUS 6.7 in the finite element formulation. The model for the 3D truss system of the whole bridge is shown in Fig.4. The geometrical and material nonlinearities were taken into consideration in the calculation. A bi-linear model was used for the stress-strain relationship. The yield stress was taken as 350MPa and the initial elastic modulus as 2.0105Mpa. After yielding had occurred, the slope of the stress-strain curve was 1% of the initial elastic modulus showing that strain-hardening was taken into consideration. For structural elements in which plastic deformation could occur, such as deformation in arch rib and vertical posts, elastic-plastic fiber element was used in the simulation. Other structural elements such as the deck, lateral framing, etc. were simulated by using an elastic beam model. In order to investigate the effect of initial internal forces, the earthquake response was first calculated under the action of initial internal forces. The calculation was separated into two steps. First, the initial internal forces were considered and then the calculation of nonlinear earthquake response was performed.

Figure 4 : Non-linear dynamic analysis model

3.2

Characteristics of Free Vibration

Characteristics of free vibration within the bridge has already been discussed in (Cheng-Yu Liang, Airong Chen 2009). A brief description is provided below. Fig.5 shows the major in-plane vibration modes. The corresponding natural frequencies, participation factors and effective mass ratios are listed in Table 1. Due to the complicated vibration modes present in an arch bridge, the vertical and horizontal vibrations are coupled and the effective mass ratios for the first stage and second stage in-plane vibration modes are

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all smaller than 20%. The anti-symmetric mode has a large participation factor in the longitudinal vibration, and the symmetric mode has a large participation factor in the vertical vibration. It can be deduced from Table 1 that the anti-symmetric mode has an important effect on the characteristics of the arch bridge vibration.

Figure 5 : Shapes of the major in-plane modes of the bridge Table 1 : Natural frequencies, participation factors and effective mass ratio of in-plane modes Freq. Effective mass ratio Participation factors Mode % Hz Longi.Dir. Vert.Dir. Longi.Dir. Vert.Dir. 2 0.6577 0.5752 0.0066 15.39 0.00 10 2.1335 1.1985 0.0752 17.95 0.07 17 3.4235 -0.7439 0.0216 39.96 0.03 21 4.4962 -0.3569 0.0082 3.70 0.00

4 4.1

EARTHQUAKE RESPONSE AND ANALYSIS OF THE BRIDGE Earthquake damage

Fig.6 shows the damage distributions for the three types of site conditions subject to three different kinds of seismic waves. For Type I conditions, the damage concentrated on the vertical posts at the top of the arch (not shown in the figure). The arch ribs did not reach the yielding condition. For Type II site conditions, the damage concentrated on the base of the arch, side posts, and vertical posts on top of the arch. For Type III conditions, the damage concentrated on the base of the arch. This was due to the peak period in the major mode of vibration (the anti-symmetric mode), which was 1.2s. However, the characteristic period of Type I condition was smaller than the critical periodsubjecting the arch rib to relatively smaller vibration resulting in a lack of damage from the earthquake. The previous results show that site conditions have a definite effect on the location of seismic damage. Nevertheless, independent of the type of the inputted seismic wave, the damage to the arch bridge was found to be at the base of the arch. Therefore, we can see that maintaining the ductility in the cross-section of the arch base can greatly improve the resistance of the steel arch bridge to earthquake. Furthermore, under the same site conditions, all three seismic waves have the same periodic properties and caused similar damages to the structure. 4.2 Displacement

Fig.7 shows the computational results of the longitudinal and vertical displacements at qauarter-span (L/4) and mid-span respectively. The figures indicate that the displacements of Type I sites are generally small, but displacements of Types II and III sites are larger and similar to each other. The results show that strong and hard site conditions give smaller displacement responses those of other site conditions and that the vibration resistance for the structure at this site condition is better than at the other two site conditions.

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Seismic wave II-1 in action

Seismic wave II-2 in action

(a)

(b) Seismic wave II-3 in action (Same damage location for all three seismic waves) Figure 6 : Plastic zone when subjected to earthquake action : (a) Seismic Damage of Type II Site, (b) Seismic Damage of Type III Site

In addition, it can be seen from the results that, although only horizontal earthquake loads were inputted into the structural response calculation, the calculated vertical displacement at L/4 exceeded the horizontal displacement. This result indicates that the vertical earthquake force could not be neglected and special attention should be given to the seismic resistance design of arch bridges in Type II and III site conditions. 4.3 Internal Force

Fig.8 shows the seismic response time history curves of axial force and bending moment acting on the cross-section of the right arch base. In the figure, the axial force is expressed relative to the yielding force, Ny of the cross-section, and the bending moment is expressed relative to the yielding moment, My. It can be seen from the figure that, for Type I sites, the ratio for maximum axial force is 0.285, and the ratio for maximum moment is 0.877; for Type II site, the ratio for maximum axial force is 0.220, and the ratio for maximum moment is 1.047; and finally for Type III site, the ratio for maximum axial force is 0.217, and the ratio for maximum moment is 1.023. These results indicate that the vibration curves of the axial force for the three

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types of site conditions look very similar, with the Type I curve having a slightly larger magnitude. However, larger differences are found in the moment curves between Type I sites and Type II and III sites, which indicate that the deformation occurred in the arch rib has led to additional bending moment.

Type I Site

Type II Site

Type III Site (a)

Type I Site

Type II Site

Type III Site (b) Figure 7 : Displacement responses of the arch rib : (a) Longitudinal Displacement, (b) Vertical Displacement

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Type I Site

Type II Site

Type III Site Figure 8 : Axial force and bending moment responses at the cross-section with the most severe seismic damage.

5 THE FEASIBILITY OF THE PUSHOVER METHOD IN THE DAMAGE ANALYSIS OF ARCH BRIDGES To investigate the feasibility of the pushover method in the analysis of seismic damage mechanisms, the pushover method was used herein to analyze the damage mechanisms of the bridge, accounting for the effect of loading pattern. The calculation considered three different loading patterns as shown in Fig.9: anti-symmetric pattern for seismic load (together with horizontal and vertical loads, M-1); anti-symmetric pattern for horizontal seismic load (together with horizontal load only, M-2); and horizontal seismic load applied in a reversed triangular pattern (M-3). In Fig.10 mi is the mass of node i,

i = hi h0

(1)

where h0 is the height from the arch base to the bridge deck; hi is the height of node i; hi and vi are the horizontal and vertical displacements at the mid node i of the anti-symmetric vibration mode respectively. Based on a maximum value of 1.0, the maximum horizontal displacement is 0.552 and the maximum vertical displacement is 1.0. Therefore, for the M-2 loading input, the loading pattern was input after subtracting an amount of 0.552.

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Fhi = {mi hi }

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Fvi = {mi vi }

(a)
Fhi = {mi hi }

(b)
Fhi = {mi i }

(c) Figure 9 : The seismic load input pattern in the pushover method calculation : (a)Based on second stage vibration pattern (planar anti-symmetric) plus horizontal and vertical loads, (b) Based on second stage vibration pattern (planar anti-symmetric) plus horizontal load, (c) Horizontal load inputted in a reversed triangular pattern

Using the three aforementioned loading patterns, the calculated plastic zone was found to appear initially at the arch base cross-section for all cases. Fig.10 shows the relationship between the strain and the loading parameter at a location where plastic deformation first occurred for all three loading patterns. Parameter corresponds to a response to maximum seismic acceleration. The responses to initial yielding acceleration for the three loading patterns are 21.56, 29.95 and 21.63 respectively, where the results for M-1 and M-3 are basically the same.

Figure 10 : The strain development at arch base calculated using the pushover method

Loading parameter

Initial strain at completion of bridge

Strain

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The results show that the relationship between the strain in the damaged cross-section and the loading parameter is the same for all three load patterns, indicating a similar damage process for the different loading patterns. The outcome of loading based on a vibration pattern falls between the results of the other two loading methods. Comparing the various results of seismic responses, it can be seen that the location of seismic damage in the arch rib obtained by use of the pushover method is similar to that from the response of the nonlinear earthquake time-history. 6. CONCLUSIONS

(1) The effect of site conditions on the seismic response of the arch bridge is influenced by the anti-symmetric vibration frequency. Although the magnitude of the response spectrum for the Type I site is the largest amongst the sites considered, the arch rib is subjected to the smallest earthquake loading where the characteristic period of the site is smaller than the period of anti-symmetric natural vibration of the structure; (2) The coupling effect of vertical vibration cannot be neglected in the seismic response of an arch bridge, especially in the cross-section at the L/4 span point. Under the action of horizontal seismic force, the vertical seismic displacement is larger than the horizontal seismic displacement; (3) Although the arch rib is mainly a compressive member in the structural design, deformation of the arch rib is a main cause of plastic yielding of the structure under earthquake condition; (4) The pushover method can provide a good reference in the seismic damage analysis of a steel arch bridge. Although different input modes can influence the calculated results, overall, they lead to consistent estimation of the initial plastic yielding cross-section and acceleration value at yielding. REFERENCES
J. Sakai, K. Kawashima, 2003,Seismic response of a reinforced concrete arch bridge taking account of axial force and moment interaction, Journal of Structural Mechanics and Earthquake Engineering, JSCE, No.724/I-62, 69-81, 2003.1, [in Japanese]. T. Nonaka, A. Ali, 2001,Dynamic response of half-through steel arch bridge using fiber model, Journal of Bridge Engineering, ASCE, 6(6):482-488, 2001. T. Nonaka, T. Usami, H. Yoshino et al.,2003, Elastic-plastic behavior and improvement of seismic performance for upper-deck type steel arch bridges, Journal of Structural Mechanics and Earthquake Engineering, JSCE, No.731/I-63, 31-49, 2003.4, [in Japanese]. K. Morishita, K. Inoue, K. Kawashima et al.,2004, Experimental verification on the effectiveness of damper braces for reducing response of a steel model bridge, Journal of Structural Mechanics and Earthquake Engineering, JSCE, No.766/I-68, 277-290, 2004.7, [in Japanese]. T. Usami, H. Ge, K Hioki, Z. Lu et al.,2004, Seismic performance upgrading of steel arch bridges using structural control dampers against transverse directional earthquake motions, Journal of Structural Mechanics and Earthquake Engineering, JSCE, No.766/I-68, 245-261, 2004.7, [in Japanese]. Cheng-Yu Liang, Airong Chen,2009, Earthquake response analysis of long span steel deck arch bridge considered effects of elasto-plastic finite displacement, Journal of Vibration and shock, 2009, 28(11):144~151 [in Chinese]. Japan Road Association, Specification for highway bridges, Part V, seismic design, 2002.