Resilience of coastal bridges under extreme wave-induced loads

Records of wave-induced damage on coastal bridges during natural hazards have been well documented over the past two decades.It is of utmost importance to decipher the loading mechanism and enhance the resilience of coastal bridges during extreme wave-inducing events.Quantification of vulnerability of these structures is an essential step in designing a resilient bridge system.Recently,considerable efforts have been made to study the force applied and the response of coastal bridge systems during extreme wave loading conditions.Although remarkable progress can be found in the quantification of load and response of coastal superstructures,very few studies assessed coastal bridge resiliency against extreme wave-induced loads.This paper adopts a simplified and practical technique to analyze and assess the resilience of coastal bridges exposed to extreme waves.Component-level and system-level fragility analyses form the basis of the resiliency analysis where the recovery functions are adopted based on the damage levels.It is shown that wave period has the highest contribution to the variation of bridge resiliency.Moreover,this study presents the uncertainty quantification in resiliency variation due to changes in wave load intensity.Results show that the bridge resiliency becomes more uncertain as the intensity of wave parameters increases.Finally,possible restoration strategies based on the desired resilience level and the attitude of decision-makers are also discussed.

Semi-Active Predictive Control of Isolated Bridge Based on Magnetorheological Elastomer Bearing

Time-delay of magnetorheological elastomer bearing(MRB) can bring structural response menace to bridges. This paper investigates a bridge pier-bearing semi-active-coupling control method based on model predictive control(MPC). The presented strategy takes the structure prediction model to predict the state responses of the controlled plant in a period of future time. Then, the control law can be determined by solving a finite horizon optimization problem. The peak shearing force of pier top, the displacement and the acceleration of beam are chosen as control goals, and the vibration isolation rate is applied to characterize the vibration isolation effect.It is noted that MPC method naturally takes the time-delay and uncertain interference into consideration, and significantly improves the control performance of the system. Finally, the numerical example is described and the seismic response of isolated bridge based on MRB is analyzed. The simulation results show that predictive control can be used to control the time-delay of bridge system in different degrees. The best control performance is at0.4 s. Even if the time-delay reaches 2 s, it is still good. Therefore, the control method significantly reduces the adverse effects of time-delay on the system, and has a good vibration isolation performance.

Shake table tests of different seismic isolation systems on a large scale structure subjected to low to moderate earthquakes

Seismic isolation systems designed for extreme events may likely experience low to moderate earthquakes during the design life of the structure rather than the extreme event itself.In new seismic building design codes, low and moderate earthquakes are also mandatory to be investigated in Turkey and some other countries. One of the main reasons is to protect the integrity of non-structural elements or machines during these types of earthquakes. The selection of appropriate seismic isolation is typically decided based on their forcedisplacement characteristics and amount of energy dissipation per cycle. The same energy dissipation per cycle(EDC) can be achieved by high force-low displacement or low force-high displacement response. The focus of this research is given to identify the performance of ball rubber bearing isolation systems compared to different or similar EDC units such as elastomeric bearings and lead rubber bearings through a series of shake table tests performed at low to moderate earthquake levels. Shake table tests were conducted on an almost full scale short span bridge. The tests have revealed that the ball rubber bearings are superior to elastomeric bearings in terms of EDC and can match EDC of LRB. However, although LRB and BRB have the same EDC, BRB is more beneficial to use under low to moderate earthquakes since BRB can transmit less force with larger displacement compared to LRB and LRB can sometimes stay in elastic range with an ineffective EDC as a stiffer elastomeric bearing.