Performance-Based Seismic Design of Long-Span Railway Arch Bridge

Abstract

New requirement is claimed for the seismic design method of long-span railway bridges with the rapid development of high-speed railway construction in China during the last decade. However, the present design code of our country seems not keep pace with the engineering practice. The existing method, although embodying the philosophy of performance-based earthquake resistance design framework, in ‘the seismic design code of railway engineering’ is only applicable to those girder bridges with spans smaller than 150m. Therefore, the authors introduce the anti-seismic design measures of highway bridges from the Current China Specification to check the seismic safety of a long-span railway arch bridge as an applying example. Different seismic fortification criterions and property objects of the structural system and components are supplied in order to optimize the anti-seism performance of this bridge. The numerical results show that this kind of approach is helpful to improve the dynamical properties and seismic performances of large span railway bridges.