| dc.description.abstract | ABSTRACT
Through the experience of past extreme earthquakes which caused extensive damage, a number of bridges suffered damage so as to hamper the rescue even the recovery of economy. In these events, pounding between decks was observed on most of the bridges which suffered severe damage even unseating. Although the pounding effect of seismically-excited bridges has been studied by many researchers, the bridges with inclined decks have not been investigated on this effect. However, the decks of bridges should be of slopes due to various terrain, route alignment and elevation. Occasionally the slope is up to 10%.
Therefore, this research is aimed to study the pounding effect of bridges with inclined decks under strong ground motions. Then, to clarify the accuracy of the analytical model of inclined bridges with pounding, a series of shaking table tests are conducted by using a small steel model under harmonic excitations. Through comparison, the analytical results agree to the experimental results very well.
Finally, we analyze an isolated bridge to investigate the extreme effects of the slope for bridges, bearings and columns and to discuss the damage and dynamic responses of target bridges. The numerical results indicate that the relatively displacements, the pounding number and forces, bearing forces increase as the slope of decks increases, In particular, large slope causes the isolators to exhibit tensile forces, which is harmful to the bridges.
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