• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.425-434
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• 2019

It is important to ensure the seismic safety of pile-bent bridges constructed in areas with thick soft ground consisting of various soil layers against seismic motion in these layers. In this study, several synthetic seismic waves that are compatible with the seismic design spectrum for rock sites were generated, and the ground acceleration history of each soil layer was obtained based on ground analyses. Using these acceleration histories, each soil layer was modeled using equivalent linear springs, and multi-support excitation analyses were performed using the input motion obtained at each soil layer. Due to the nonlinear behavior of the soft soil layers, the intensity of the input ground motion was not amplified, which resulted in the elastic behavior of the bridge. In addition, inputting the acceleration history obtained from a particular layer simultaneously into all the ground springs reduced the response. Therefore, the seismic performance of this type of bridge might be overestimated if multi-excitation analysis is not performed.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.23 no.7
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• pp.137-144
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• 2019

For the structures near the seismogenic fault, the evaluation of seismic performance against near-fault ground motions is important as well as for design ground motions. In this study, characteristics of seismic behaviors and seismic performance of the pile-bent bridge constructed on the thick soft soil site with various weak soil layers were analyzed. The input ground motions were synthesized by the directivity pulse parameters for intra-plate regions. The ground motion acceleration histories of each layer were obtained by one-dimensional site response analysis. Each soil layer was modeled by equivalent linear springs, and multi-support excitations with different input ground motions at each soil spring were applied for nonlinear seismic analyses. The analysis result by the near-fault ground motions and ground motions matched to design spectra were compared. In case of the near fault ground motion input, the bridge behaved within the elastic range but the location of the maximum moment occurred was different from the result of design ground motion input.