Evaluation of rocking seismic isolation performance of railway tall piers with different energy dissipation devices

Abstract

Conventional pier top isolation measures cannot reduce the inertial force produced by railway gravity tall piers. This may damage the pier column and pile foundation during strong earthquakes. As an effective pier bottom seismic isolation structure, rocking piers have broad application prospects in railway tall pier bridges. This paper considers five energy dissipation devices (EDDs) to constrain the bottom of a free rocking pier (F-RP), namely buckling restrained braces (BRBs), yielding steel cables (YSCs), self-centering buckling restrained braces (SC-BRBs), superelastic shape memory alloy wires (SMAs), and viscous dampers (VDs). In particular, an additional “locking” structure is proposed to prevent excessive rocking of the piers and protect the EDDs. Parameter design methods are proposed for damage control and residual deformation control of piers. Nonlinear static and dynamic analyses are performed. The results show that the fixed base piers based on the ductility design suffered severe damage during strong earthquakes. The longitudinal rebar strain ratio is recommended as the damage index for the rocking pier due to large axial force fluctuations. Based on the design method proposed in this paper, the additional EDD constraints make the pier's expected damage level controllable and improve the post-earthquake predictability of the railway pier. BRBs and VDs are unfavorable to pier bottom shear forces. YSCs may produce irrecoverable residual deformation, while BRBs may have significant residual stresses. SC-BRBs and SMAs require no post-earthquake repair. SC-BRBs have more potential for application in rocking piers in high-intensity earthquake areas.