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Three-dimensional nonlinear analysis of dynamic soil-pile-structure interaction for bridge systems under earthquake shakings

University of British Columbia

Bridge designers have adopted simple approximate methods to take into account soil-structure-interaction (SSI) in dynamic analysis of bridge systems. The most popular one is the substructuring method in which the response of the foundation soil and its interaction with the pile foundation and the abutment system are represented by a set of one-dimensional springs and dashpots. While this method has been widely used in practice, it has never been validated by comparing the results with those obtained from full-scale analyses. This thesis aims to evaluate the substructuring method and to quantify the level of associated errors for the use in bridge engineering. To this end, the baseline data required for the evaluation process is provided by full-scale nonlinear dynamic analysis of the bridge systems subjected to earthquake shaking using continuum modeling method. This involves detailed modeling of the foundation soil, pile foundations, abutment system, and the whole bridge structure. Three representative bridge systems with two, three, and nine spans are simulated. In all models, nonlinear hysteretic response of the foundation soil and the bridge piers are accounted for in the analyses using advanced constitutive models. The numerical model of the bridge is validated by simulating the seismic response of the Meloland Road Overpass for which extensive measured data exist over past earthquake events. Subsequently each one of the three bridge systems is also simulated using the substructuring method. Comparing the obtained results with the baseline data indicates that the substructure model may not be sufficiently reliable in predicting the bridge response. In particular the method is shown to misrepresent the spectral responses of the bridge, pier deflections, shear forces and bending moments induced at the pier base, and longitudinal and transverse forces induced to the abutments. The substructuring method is shown to suffer from several fundamental drawbacks that cannot be simply resolved. Using the recent advances in constitutive modeling of geotechnical and structural materials, and in computational tools and high-performance parallel computing, this thesis shows that large-scale continuum models can gradually become a powerful and significantly more reliable alternative for proper modeling of seismic SSI in bridge engineering.

Text

2015-05-31

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/51269

Civil Engineering

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ca/