Shake table experimental study of cable-stayed bridges with two different design strategies of H-shaped towers

As one of the main load-carrying components of cable-stayed bridges,bridge towers are typically required to remain elastic even when subjected to severe ground motions with a 2%-3%probability of exceedance in 50 years.To fulfill this special requirement imposed by current seismic design codes,reinforcement ratios in the bridge towers have to be kept significantly higher than if limited ductility behavior of the tower is allowed.In addition,since the foundation capacity is closely related to the moment and shear capacities of the bridge tower,a large increase in bridge construction cost for elastically designed cable-stayed bridge is inevitable.To further investigate the possibility of limited ductility bridge tower design strategies,a new 1/20-scale cable-stayed bridge model with H-shaped bridge towers designed according to strong strut-weak tower column design was tested.The shake table experimental results are compared with a previous strong tower column-weak strut designed full bridge model.A comparison of the results show that ductility design with plastic hinges located on tower columns,i.e.,strong strut-weak tower column design,is another effective seismic design strategy that results in only small residual displacement at the top of the tower column,even under very severe earthquake excitations.

Analysis on kinematic and inertial interaction in liquefiable soil-pile-structure dynamic system

The dynamic pile-soil interaction in a liquefied site was investigated by means of numerical simulation and shaking table tests in this study.Based on the results from the shaking table experiment,the cross-correlation analysis of the soil displacement-pile bending moment and superstructure acceleration-pile bending moment was performed to study the influence of kinematic interaction and inertial interaction on the seismic response of piles.A relatively reasonable and accurate finite difference numerical analysis model of liquefiable soil-pile group-superstructure dynamic system was established.Through numerical simulation,the understanding of kinematic interaction and inertial interaction in the shaking table test was verified.The mass,damping and period of the superstructure were selected as variables to carry out parameter analysis to further study the influence of inertial interaction on the pile-structure failure mechanism.The results show that the influence of kinematic interaction on the pile was much greater than that of inertial interaction.The mass of the superstructure was the most important parameter of inertial interaction,and dynamic characteristics of the superstructure also had an effect on inertial interaction.The effect of inertial interaction on the part near the pile tip was more significant,indicating that the failure near the pile tip is closely related to inertial interaction.