Shake Table Tests of Tall-Pier Bridges to Evaluate Seismic Performance
Publication: Journal of Bridge Engineering
Volume 23, Issue 9
Abstract
More than 40% of the bridges in mountainous areas of Southwest China are constructed with piers having a height of over 40 m. Such piers are characterized by large structural flexibility and distributed mass. To investigate the effects of higher modes on the seismic performance of this class of bridges, shake table tests on two 1/7-scale, tall-pier models were conducted at Tongji University, Shanghai. This paper describes the design, instrumentation, and loading protocols for the tests and discusses and compares the results. Due to the higher-mode effects, the curvature at the pier base and displacement at the pier top of were found to be weakly correlated, indicating that displacement is not a reliable damage measure for tall piers. Moreover, results indicated that the contribution of higher modes can lead to the formation of an additional plastic region at midheight in the piers. However, current seismic design code guidelines are for short to medium-height piers, where the midheight region of piers is assumed to respond elastically; code guidelines are not provided for tall piers. This paper explores the effect of higher modes on the seismic performance of bridges with tall piers and suggests two methods to improve the seismic performance: (1) eliminating the midheight plastic response by including more longitudinal steel, and (2) using more confinement in the midheight region to improve pier ductility and prevent shear failure.
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Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support by the Self-innovation Project of the State Key Laboratory for Disaster Reduction in Civil Engineering of Tongji University (SLDRCE15-A-01), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51678434). Also, the first author acknowledges the support of the China Scholarship Council.
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Published In
Journal of Bridge Engineering
Volume 23 • Issue 9 • September 2018
Copyright
© 2018 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: May 11, 2017
Accepted: Feb 16, 2018
Published online: Jun 19, 2018
Published in print: Sep 1, 2018
Discussion open until: Nov 19, 2018
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