Pounding Between Superstructure Segments in Multi-Supported Elevated Bridge with Three-Span Continuous Deck Under 3D Non-Uniform Earthquake Excitation

Reports after severe ground motions show that the earthquake-induced structural pounding may lead to significant damage in elevated bridges. The aim of this paper is to analyze pounding between superstructure segments of a highway elevated bridge with three-span continuous deck under 3D non-uniform earthquake excitation, which is induced by spatial seismic effects related to the propagation of seismic wave. The conditional stochastic approach has been applied to generate the earthquake records for different support locations along the structure. The analysis has been conducted with the help of FEM taking into account the influence of rotation of superstructure segments due to corner collisions. The detailed non-linear strain-rate-dependent model has been applied to simulate the behavior of bearings under earthquake excitation. The results of the study confirm that pounding has considerable influence on the behavior of the analyzed bridge and may lead to the substantial increase in the structural response. They show that the structural response depends much on the gap size between adjacent superstructure segments. Moreover, the results clearly indicate that the incorporation of the non-uniform earthquake excitation may lead to considerable changes in the structural behavior. The application of the method of conditional stochastic modeling for generation of earthquake records has also been proved to be useful for practical purposes of modeling the spatial seismic effects for long multi-supported elevated bridges.