A numerical study on the influences of underlying soil and backfill characteristics on the dynamic behaviour of typical integral bridges

The identification of the dynamic behaviour of a structure is one of the crucial steps in the design of the dynamic resistance of the structure. The dynamic behaviour is represented by the natural frequencies and damping which are subsequently used along with the considered dynamic actions in the design process. In regard of integral bridge concept, one of the consequences of the omission of joints and bearings is the substantial soil-structure interaction which in turn increases the sensitivity of the dynamic behaviour of the bridges to the surrounding soil characteristic. In this article, we extended our hybrid BEM-FEM steady-state dynamic numerical tool to the 3D regime, developed by utilizing an in-house BEM and the commercial FEM software ABAQUS and use it to analyse the dynamic interaction between the bridge and the underlying soil as well as the backfill. The numerical results from four typical integral bridges show that underlying soil characteristic has great effect on the resonant frequencies and the damping. The backfill material properties tend to have less significant role due to the abutment wingwalls dominating the force transfer between the soil and the superstructure. The results also show that the degree of influence of the soil-structure interaction on the coupled system is affected by the type of load pattern in addition to the flexural stiffness of the superstructure.