• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.45-53
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• 2010

The unseating failure of bridges, which is one of the most severe types of damage leading to the loss of transportation function, should be avoided in earthquakes. As a measure of prevention of unseating failure resulting from the failure of bearings, bearing-protection devices are frequently used. They are installed beside the bearings and protect the bearings by resisting a seismic load transmitted from the superstructure. In order to show appropriate seismic performance, the strength of anchors as well as of device bodies should be confirmed. In Korea, they have been installed only according to the design provided by device agents, because a proper design method for the anchors has not been established. In this study the performance of bearing-protection devices with various heights of concrete bed blocks has been investigated experimentally, and a proper design method has been proposed to secure seismic performance.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 2001.09a
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• pp.311-319
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• 2001

Recently, the number of seismically isolated bridges increased suddenly since the occurrence of strong earthquakes. However, because isolator lies between pier and girder, the response of the superstructure of seismically isolated bridge may be magnified and induce risk of unseating girder Consequently, the response of girder constitutes a crucial factor in designing bridge. In the case of frictional bearing, the inherent nonlinearity makes the use of former linear response spectrum unable to estimate the maximum response of the bearing, and nonlinear tlme history analysis shall be applied. In this paper, nonlinear response spectrum considering frictional element is established, and simple analysis method using such nonlinear spectrum is proposed to estimate the maximum response of the superstructure.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.75-86
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• 1999

An analysis model is developed to evaluate the dynamic responses of a bridge system under seismic excitations, in which pounding actions between girders are considered in addition to other phenomena such as nonlinear pier motion, rotational and translational motions of foundations. The model also considers the abutment and restrainers connecting adjacent girders to prevent the unseating failures. Using the developed model, the longitudinal dynamic behaviors of a bridge system are examined for various peak ground accelerations, and the effects of the applied restrainers are investigated. It is found that the restrainers reduce the relative displacement with the shorter clearance length as well as the higher stiffness of the restrainers for moderate excitations. However, in the region with strong excitations the restrainers may yield due to the large relative displacement. Therefore, the extension of support length in addition to restrainers may need to prevent the unseating failure more effectively.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.6 no.5
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• pp.19-27
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• 2002

Dynamic responses of a multi-span simply supported bridge are investigated to examine the effect of bearing damage under seismic excitations. The damaged bearings are modeled as sliding elements with friction between the superstructure and the top of the pier. Various values of the friction coefficients are examined to figure out the effect of damaged bearings with various levels of peak ground accelerations. It is found that the global seismic behaviors are significantly influenced by the occurrence of bearing damage. It should be noticed that the most possible location of unseating failure of superstructures differs from that in the bridge model without considering the bearing damage. It can be concluded that the bearing damage may play the major role in the unseating failure of a bridge system, so that the damage of bearings should be included to achieve more rational seismic safety evaluation.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2001.04a
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• pp.454-461
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• 2001

Dynamic responses of a multi-span simply supported bridge are examined under seismic excitations considering damage of bearings. An idealized mechanical model which can consider components such as pounding, friction at the supports, abutment-soil interaction, rotational and translational motions of foundations, and the nonlinear pier motions, is developed to analyze the effects due to damage of bearings. It is assumed that the bearing's response after failure can be expressed with a sliding model with a friction coefficient between the superstructure and the pier top. It is found that the global seismic behaviors are significantly influenced by the damage of bearings and the damage of bearings may lead to unseating failure at unpredicted supports. Therefore, It can be concluded that detailed seismic response analyses of bridge systems considering damage of bearings is required for the purpose of the seismic safety evaluation.