Seismic behaviour of isolated multi-span continuous bridge to nonstationary random seismic excitation

Abstract

This paper concentrates on the results of responses of a multi-span continuous bridge isolated with double concave friction pendulum bearings subjected to non-stationary random seismic excitation characterized by the incoherence, the wave-passage, and the site-response effects. The earthquake excitation is modelled as a non-stationary random process as uniformly modulated broad-band excitation. To perform the seismic isolation procedure, the double concave friction pendulum bearings which are sliding devices that utilize two spherical concave surfaces are placed at each of the six support points of the deck. The non-stationary response of the isolated bridge is compared with the corresponding stationary response in order to study the effects of non-stationary characteristics of the earthquake input motion. Solutions obtained from the stationary and non-stationary stochastic analyses for the isolated bridge to spatially varying earthquake ground motions are compared for the special cases of the earthquake ground motion model. The spatially varying earthquake ground motions are described stochastically based on an empirical coherency loss function and a filtered power spectral density function. The site effect is considered by a transfer function derived from one dimensional wave propagation theory. It is observed that the stationary assumption is reasonable for the considered ground motion duration.