• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.6 no.6
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• pp.17-24
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• 2002

Dynamic behaviors of a bridge system with several simple spans are evaluated to examine the effects of nonlinear abutment motions upon the seismic responses of the bridge. The idealized mechanical model for the whole bridge system is developed by adopting the multi-degree-of-freedom system, which can consider various influential components. To compare the results, both linear and nonlinear abutment-backfill models are prepared. The linear system has the constant abutment stiffness, and the nonlinear system has the nonlinear stiffness considering the abutment stiffness degradation due to the abutment-soil interaction. From simulation results, the nonlinear abutment motion is found to have an important influence upon the global bridge motions. Maximum relative distances between adjacent vibration units are found to be larger than those found from the linear system. In particular, maximum relative distances at the location with the highest possibility of unseating failure are increased up to about 30% in the nonlinear system. The effects of nonlinear behavior of an abutment on the bridge seismic behaviors are also increased as the number of span increase. Therefore, it can be concluded that the abutment-soil interaction should be considered in the seismic analysis of the bridge system.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2000.04b
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• pp.347-354
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• 2000

The seismic behaviors of a bridge system with several simple spans are examined to see the effects of the longitudinal stiffness degradation due to abutment-soil interaction. The abutment-backfill system is modeled as one degree-of-freedom-system with nonlinear spring and linear damper. various soil-conditions surrounding the abutment such as loose sand, medium dense sand, and dense sand are considered in the bridge seismic analysis. The idealized mechanical model for the whole bridge system is modeled by adopting the multiple-degree-of-freedom system, which can consider components such as pounding phenomena, friction at the movable supports, rotational and translational motions of foundations, and the nonlinear pier motions. The stiffness of the abutment is found to be rapidly reduced at the beginning of the earthquakes, and to be converged to constant values shortly after the displacement approaches to the Predefined critical values. It is observed that the maximum relative distanced an maximum relative displacements are generally Increased as the relative density of a soil decreases As the peak ground acceleration increases, the response ratio of the case considering stiffness degradation to the case considering constant stiffness decreases.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 2000.04a
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• pp.357-366
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• 2000

Longitudinal dynamic behaviors of a bridge system under seismic excitations are examined with various magnitudes of peak ground accelerations. The stiffness degradation due to abutment-soil interaction is considered in the bridge model which may play the major role upon the global dynamic characteristics. The idealized mechanical model for the whole ridge system is proposed by adopting the multiple-degree-of-freedom system which can consider components such as pounding phenomena friction at the movable supports rotational and translational motions of foundations and the nonlinear pier motions. The abutment-soil interaction is simulated by utilizing the one degree-of-freedom system with nonlinear spring. The stiffness degradation of the abutment-soil system is found to increase the relative displacement under moderate seismic excitations.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.621-633
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• 2000

Dynamic responses of a bridge system with several simple spans under longitudinal seismic excitations are examined. The bridge system is modeled as the multiple oscillators and each oscillator consists of four degrees-of-freedom system to implement the poundings between the adjacent oscillators and the friction at movable supports. Pounding effects are considered by introducing the impact elements and a bi-linear model is adopted for the friction force. From the parametric studies, the pounding is found to induce complicated seismic responses and to restrain significantly the relative displacements between the adjacent units. The smaller gap size also restricts more strictly the relative displacement. It is found that the relative displacements between the abutment and adjacent pier unit became much larger than the responses between the inner pier units. Consequently, the unseating failure could take a place between the abutment and nearby pier units. It is also found that the relative displacements of an abutment unit to the adjacent pier unit are governed by the pounding at the opposite side abutment.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 2001.04a
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• pp.353-360
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• 2001

An analysis procedure of 2-dimensional bridge dynamics has been developed by using force-deformation model, which simulates the pier motion under biaxial bending due to the bi-directional input seismic excitations. A three-dimensional mechanical model is utilized, which can consider the other major phenomena such as pounding, rotation of the superstructure, abutment stiffness degradation, and motions of the foundation motions. The bi-directional dynamic behaviors of the bridge are then examined by investigating the relative displacements of each oscillator to the ground. It is found that the nonlinearity of the pier due to biaxial bending affects the pier motions, but the global bridge behaviors are greatly governed by the pounding phenomena and stiffness degradation of the abutment-backfill system. Especially, the relative displacement of the abutment system (A2) with movable supports to the ground is increased about 30% due to the abutment stiffness degradation.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.22 no.8
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• pp.13-24
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• 2006

A site investigation has been performed for bridge abutments constructed on soft ground, which are deformed laterally by backfill. As the result from the evaluation of lateral movement in bridge abutment, the foundation piles were not considered as the passive pile at the design stage and the period for soft ground improvement was not proper. In order to prevent lateral movement of bridge abutment, the pile slab is proposed as a countermeasure. This method can effectively prevent the lateral flow of soft ground, since the overburden surcharge due to backfill on soft ground would be effectively delivered to bedrock through the piles in soft ground. The instrumentation system is designed and installed to investigate the behavior of bridge abutment on soft ground reinforced by pile slab. The instrumentation results show that pile slab effectively resists to the lateral movement of bridge abutment due to backfill. Also, the surcharge loads due to backfill are transmitted to the bedrock through piles. It confirms that the pile slab effectively resists to the lateral movement of bridge abutment due to backfill and the applied design method is reasonable.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.63 no.5
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• pp.647-657
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• 2017

To achieve this goal, two four-span concrete box-girder bridges with typical configurations of California highway bridges are selected as representative bridges: an integral abutment bridge and a seat-type abutment bridge. A detailed numerical model of the representative bridges is created in OpenSees to perform dynamic analyses. To examine the effect of earthquake incidence angle on the fragility of skewed bridges, the representative bridge models are modified with different skew angles. Dynamic analyses for all bridge models are performed for all earthquake incidence angles examined. Simulated results are used to develop demand models and component and system fragility curves for the skewed bridges. The fragility characteristics are compared with regard to earthquake incidence angle. The results suggest that the earthquake incidence angle more significantly affects the seismic demand and fragilities of the integral abutment bridge than the skewed abutment bridge. Finally, a recommendation to account for the randomness due to the ground motion directionality in the fragility assessment is made in the absence of the predetermined earthquake incidence angle.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.759-767
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• 2003

This paper presents the simplified but more rational analysis method for the prediction of additional internal forces induced in integral abutment bridges. These internal forces depend upon the degree of restraint provided tc the deck by the backfill soil adjacent to the abutments and piles. In addition, effect of the relative flexural stiffness ratio among pile foundations, abutment, and superstructure on the structural behavior is also an important factor. The first part of the paper develops the stiffness matrices, written in terms of the soil stiffness, for the lateral and rotational restraints provided by the backfill soil adjacent to the abutment. The finite difference analysis is conducted and it is confirmed that the results are agreed well with the predictions obtained by the proposed method. The simplified spring model is used in the parametric study on the behavior of simple span and multi-span continuous integral abutment PSC beam bridges in which the abutment height and the flexural rigidity of piles are varied. These results are compared with those obtained by loading Rankine passive earth pressure according to the conventional method. From the results of parametric study, it was shown that the abutment height, the relative flexural rigidity of superstructure and piles, and the earth pressure induced by temperature change greatly affect the overall structural response of the bridge system. It may be possible to obtain more rational and economical designs for integral abutment bridges by the proposed method.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.373-385
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• 2019

In this article, different frequently adopted modeling aspects of linear and nonlinear dynamic soil-structure interaction (SSI) are studied on a pile-supported integral abutment bridge structure using the open-source platform OpenSees (McKenna et al. 2000, Mazzoni et al. 2007, McKenna and Fenves 2008) for a 2D domain. Analyzed approaches are as follows: (i) free field input at the base of fixed base bridge; (ii) SSI input at the base of fixed base bridge; (iii) SSI model with two dimensional quadrilateral soil elements interacting with bridge and incident input motion propagating upwards at model bottom boundary (with and without considering the effect of abutment backfill response); (iv) simplified SSI model by idealizing the interaction between structural and soil elements through nonlinear springs (with and without considering the effect of abutment backfill response). Salient conclusions of this paper include: (i) free-field motions may differ significantly from those computed at the base of the bridge foundations, thus put a significant bias on the inertial component of SSI; (ii) conventional modeling of SSI through series of soil springs and dashpot system seems to stay on the safer side under dynamic conditions when one considers the seismic actions on the structure by considering a fully coupled SSI model; (iii) consideration of abutment-backfill in the SSI model positively affects the general response of the bridge, as a result of large passive resistance that may develop behind the abutments.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.259-274
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• 1998

The test results from non-destructive and destructive field testing of a three-span deteriorated reinforced concrete slab bridge are used as a vehicle to examine the reliability of available tools for finite-element analysis of in-situ structures. Issues related to geometric modeling of members and connections, material models, and failure criteria are discussed. The results indicate that current material models and failure criteria are adequate, although lack of inelastic out-of-plane shear response in most nonlinear shell elements is a major shortcoming that needs to be resolved. With proper geometric modeling, it is possible to adequately correlate the measured global, regional, and local responses at all limit states. However, modeling of less understood mechanisms, such as slab-abutment connections, may need to be finalized through a system identification technique. In absence of the experimental data necessary for this purpose, upper and lower bounds of only global responses can be computed reliably. The studies reaffirm that success of finite-element models has to be assessed collectively with reference to all responses and not just a few global measurements.