Study on the seismic characteristics of piers considering site conditions and hydrodynamic effect

Abstract

Sea-crossing bridges face complex site environments compared to onshore bridges, with the marine environment significantly influencing seismic responses. Despite this, current seismic design for these bridges relies on onshore earthquake records. Therefore, investigating the impact of seawater layers and site conditions on sea-crossing bridge seismic performance is crucial. This paper investigates the influence of characteristics of offshore ground motion, site conditions, and hydrodynamic effect on the seismic performance of piers. Initially, based on the validated finite element model, 5 offshore and onshore strong ground motion records from K-NET were selected for assessing the seismic performance of piers. Subsequently, the effects of the water depth and site conditions on the seismic responses of piers were investigated. Finally, the effects of the section size, section shape, and boundary conditions on the piers were investigated. The result shows that the seismic response of piers under offshore ground motion exceeds that under onshore ground motion. In addition, the seismic response of the pier increases with greater water depth, while they exhibit a slight decrease with increasing soil depth. Notably, the larger the section size, result in higher the hydrodynamic pressure, and square piers experience greater hydrodynamic pressure compared to circular piers.