Test and simulation on tall reinforced concrete bridge bents with shear links as structural fuses components

Abstract

Shear links (SLs) are effective energy dissipation devices for seismic damage mitigation and resilience improvement of bridges or bridge bents. This study is to assess the influences of the SLs on controlling seismic damage or response of tall reinforced concrete (RC) bridge bents. Therefore, two tall RC bridge bent models with and without SLs are designed and tested using the shaking table. The dynamic characteristics and seismic responses are separately presented for both test models under the white noise and three input motions. Both finite element models are conceived to replicate the test results. These results demonstrate that the SLs decrease the maximum curvature and reinforced strain at the column bottom due to the SLs dissipating the seismic energy. The tall RC bridge bent model without SLs suffers seismic damage under the input motions of 0.30 g, whereas the tall RC bridge bent model with SLs undergoes seismic damage until the input motions of 0.50 g. Compared to the tall RC bridge bent model without SLs, the maximum displacements of the tall RC bridge bent model with SLs reduce because the SLs enhance the stiffness of bridge bents, leading to the displacement spectra values reduction for the S-Wave and E-Wave. Both finite element models successfully reproduce the typical test results of the tall RC bridge bent models with and without SLs and track the response variations caused by the SLs. Therefore, the effects of the SLs on controlling seismic damage and improving the seismic resilience of tall RC bridge bents are verified using shaking table tests and numerical simulations.