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Abstract

Long-span bridges support a large amount of traffic every day. Even when an earthquake strikes, a long-span bridge often still has many vehicles present due to the low predictability of earthquake events. To study the seismic performance of bridge and traffic systems, a new full-response prediction methodology for the coupled bridge-traffic interaction system under spatially varying earthquake excitations was developed by capturing the interaction effects not only between the bridge and moving vehicles, but also between earthquake excitations and the coupled bridge-traffic system. Different from existing bridge seismic analyses in which only traditional earthquake loads in terms of inertial forces are applied on the bridge structure, the new formulation can also incorporate coupled earthquake forces on the bridge and vehicles, which are expressed as functions of the bridge-traffic coupling matrices and earthquake displacement inputs. The proposed methodology was numerically demonstrated on a prototype long-span bridge and traffic system under spatially varying earthquake excitations. Responses of the bridge and vehicles were predicted when the bridge-traffic system was subjected to earthquake excitations. It was determined from the numerical analysis that the coupled earthquake force, as derived in this study, has notable influence on the dynamic performance of the bridge and vehicles under seismic excitations.

How to Cite

Chen, Suren, and Yufen Zhou. Interaction Analysis of Long-span Bridges and Traffic System Subjected to Earthquakes, MPC-19-390. North Dakota State University - Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute, Fargo: Mountain-Plains Consortium, 2019.