EACS 2012 5th European Conference on Structural Control

Genoa, Italy 18-20 June 2012 Paper No. # 074

Behaviour of a Steel Bridge Equipped with Seismic Isolation Devices

Ionu Radu RCNEL 1*, Dan Ilie CREU 2 Technical University of Civil Engineering, Department of Strength of Materials, Bridges and Tunnels 122-124 Lacul Tei Bvd., Bucharest, 020396, Romania ionut_racanel@yahoo.com, cretud@utcb.ro Costin Stelian MUTU 3 S.C. I.P.T.A.N.A. S.A., Department of Structures Computation 36-38 Dinicu Golescu Bvd., Bucharest, 010873, Romania costinmutu@yahoo.com

ABSTRACT
Bridges are structures subjected to several types of external loads during their service life. One of these external actions which have a high order of uncertainty is the seismic action and in order to design a safe structure many scenarios concerning this type of action were made. Earthquakes are one the most severe natural actions which can occur during the service life of a structure. For this reason, in the last decade, all the countries placed in active seismic regions have produced specific standards and provisions having the aim to design safer structures. Romanian territory includes several seismic faults covering a major part of the country, the seismic action being considered in the design stage for a new structure. In the past, generally, the desired safety factor for a bridge structure considering the seismic action was reached by increasing the dimensions of the structural elements. By introducing the use of passive control devices and isolating the base of tall buildings a new era began also in the field of bridges. Using special bearing devices as lead rubber bearings (LRB), high damping rubber bearing (HDRB), dampers or friction pendulum isolators (FPS) or combinations of these, the behavior of the bridge under seismic loads can be significantly improved. Thus, really benefits regarding the cost of the whole structure can be obtained. In this paper, the behavior of a new steel bridge equipped with passive control devices is investigated. The bridge has some special characteristics: large spans (200m), tall piers with height between 30 and 70m and bad soil conditions for the substructure elements. In the same time, the site is characterized by a high value of the ground acceleration (ks=0.32g). Several types of passive control devices are used, finally a comparison between their influences of the bridge response being presented. Keywords: bridge, earthquake, seismic action, lead rubber bearings, friction isolators, stresses.

1 INTRODUCTION The seimic action is one of the most severe which cand occur during the lifetime of a structure and can produce damages, in the worst situations leading even to the collapse of the structures and also casualties. Bridges are complex structures which are supporting roads or railways being also exposed to the effects of the earthquakes. The level of redundancy of a bridge is many times lower than in the case of buildings because of their geometry (mainly constructed in
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*

Corresponding author

one direction) and their structure. The bridge substructure consisting in piers and abutments is organized, almost in all cases, with the structural elements in a row, so that the effects of a severe damage on one element affect imediatelly all other elements. Last recent seismic events occured all arround the world shown what could happen if the seimic action is not or is wrong considered in the estimation of the structural behaviour. Because of the uncertainity of seimic action in terms of intensity, duration, place of occurence and mode of action it is very difficult to establish the best method to be use in order to protect a structure and limit the effects of an earthquake. In the past, the concept of increasing stiffness of the structural elements was first adopted in the design. According to this, the resistance capacity of the structure was increased and as a consequence, the dynamic response was kept in the domain with high frequencies, low periods and high acceleration values. Supplementary, the structural elements are forced to take high levels of loads which can lead to damages on their cross sections. In the last decade the performance based design, which accounts the needs of a structure in terms of displacements for, became an adopted solution in the design and induced the fact that structural flexibility can be an alternative to the structural stiffness to improve the dynamic response. The correct estimation of the needs of a structure, in terms of displacements, for a certain level of the seismic action can lead to significant reduction of costs by limitng the seismic action effects and keeping the structure further on in service. The use of innovative theoretical methods in structural response estimation, together with the introduction of passive control devices have shown that a real improvement in the structural behaviour can be achieved. The isolation devices were used first in the case of tall buildings to isolate the base and limit the values of accelerations induced by the ground motion. The solution was later implemented also for bridges and by placing such kind of devices between super and substructure, a certain level of decoupling of these to parts of bridge can be obtained. As a result, an improvement of the behaviour in terms of reducing the internal forces and limit the displacements can be observed. The study presented in this paper shows the benefits of using passive devices (Seismic Isolators and Tune Mass Dampers) to control and improve the dynamic response of a steel bridge subjected to seismic action. A well arrangement between the level of displacements and stresses induced in a structure can have favourable effects both from structural safety and economical point of view. 2 DESCRIPTION OF THE ANALYZED BRIDGE STRUCTURE The bridge analyzed in this paper will be errected on the national road DN 2D near the city of Focani. Because of the rough ground on the site and also because of the high level of the ground acceleration (0.32g) the adopted solution had some special characteristics. In order to reduce the inertial effects induced by the seismic action, a light superstructure and tall piers were adopted. For the lateral spans, the superstructure is a composite one, in concrete and steel and for the main spans, in the central part of the viaduct, a complete steel superstructure was designed. This part of the bridge was chosen for the analyses in this paper. The total length of the bridge is 1442 m in the following succesion of spans: 3 70+160+200+160+3 70+3 70+4 70m. In figure 1 an elevation of the bridge main part including the major spans is shown. Because of the large values of the spans an orthotropic deck solution was designed for the superstructure. The steel box has a variable height in the range 4.007.50 m and the distance between the vertical webs is 7.00m. The steel plates at the bottom and top part of the box as well the webs are stiffened using open ribs with flanges. Each 5.50 meters, the webs are connected in transverse direction through cross girders placed at the bottom as well at the top of the box, but also through vertical bracings. The thickness of steel sheets forming the box varies between 12 and 20 mm. The bridge superstructure sustains a roadway with three lanes (two upgrade an one downgrade) each 3.50 m width, two shoulders of 0.40 m and two footways of 1.50
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m each side of the road. It results a total width of 14.30 m of the superstructure at the top part. The cross sections through the steel box of the superstructure on the bearing (cross section A-A) and in the midspan (cross section B-B) are presented in figure 2.

Figure 1 General layout of the main part of the viaduct.

Figure 2 Cross section through the bridge superstructure. The bridge substructure consists in 2 abutments and 15 piers which have deep foundations on piles having the diameter of 1.50 m and a length of 30.00 m. Because of their height, the piers elevation has special box shape with a depth of 4.50 m in bridge longitudinal direction and a width of 7.00 m and a variable height between 39.00 m and 55.00 m. The cross section of the piers differs on the length: 20.00 m above the piles cap a single reinforced concrete box was designed and on the remaining height this was replaced two separate boxes also in reinforced concrete (Fig.3). This solution was chosen in order to increase the piers flexibility regarding the effects of the seismic action. The length of the piles which are forming the bridgefoundations is justified by the high values the piers height, but also by the presence of several soil layers with bad geotctechnical characteristics. The connection between super- and substructure is made through neoprene bearing devices which were installed below the webs of the steel box. The piers shape allows to place on each pier four bearings, this approach offering advantages regarding the dimensions of the bearing devices.

Figure 3 Cross section through piers elevations.

3 DISCRETE MODELS USED FOR THE ANALYSES In order to obtain the bridge response following the seismic action, several three dimensional simple finite element models were considered. The difference between these models consists in the modeling, characteristics and behaviour of the bearings used to support the bridge superstructure on the substructure elements. A 3D view of one of the finite element models is presented in figure 4 bellow.

Figure 4 3D view a finite element model. The bridge steel box orthotropic deck was modelled using straight frame elements with two joints. These elements concentrate the geometrical characteristics for the whole deck cross section. In order to respect the position of the deck neutral axis with respect to the piers supporting saddles, but also to the bearings, rigid connections (rigid link elements) were used in horizontal and vertical direction respectivelly, as can be seen in figure 5. For the modelling of the bearing devices, link elements with linear or nonlinear behaviour were introduced in the models, thus to obtain the desired response of the structure. The standard elastomeric have into the model linear elastic characteristics and the LRBs (Lead Rubber Bearings) together with FPSs (Friction Pendulum) isolators have nonlinear characteristics according to a bilinear response curve, as will be shown later in this paper. The TMDs (Tune Mass Dampers) attached to the piers top part were modelled using a viscous damper and a linear spring element which are acting in paralell. In figure 5 the two nodes straight frame elements modelling the piers elevation can also be seen.

Figure 5 Modelling of the connection between bridge super- and substructure. The soil-structure interaction was considered in the finite element models through six linear springs (three for translation and three for rotation degrees of freedom of the foundation system) placed at the bottom of the pile elevation, their stiffness equivaleting the stiffness of the pile group for translation and rotation respectivelly. The equivalence was made assuming that along each pile of the group are distributed, two orthogonal in horizontal plane linear springs and one spring in vertical direction. The springs characteristics were computed according to the soil parameters
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obtained from bohrholes on the site. All dynamic analyses were performed using these finite element models in order to investigate the bridge responses under seismic loads. 4 PERFORMED ANALYSES AND RESULTS In order to calibrate the models for the dynamic response, linear eigenvector analyses followed by response spectrum and linear time-history analyses were performed on the bridge equipped with standard elastomeric bearing devices. The resulted maximum values for the internal forces (bending moments and shear forces) on the piers as well the nodal displacements at superstructure level were compaired for the response spectrum and linear time-history analyses. The used design response spectrum according to the romanian norm P100-2006 is presented in figure 6 and it describes the seismic input for the bridge location characterized by a corner period Tc=1 s and a peak value of the ground acceleration ag=4.3 m/s2. According to the piers height and cross section geometry and stiffness, a behaviour factor q=2 was considered to obtain the values in the design spectrum. For the linear time-history analysis a number of five artificial accelerograms based on the previously presented response spectrum were generated. The average response spectrum according to the generated accelerograms was plotted also in figure 6 together with the design response spectrum. In figure 7 the corresponding displacements response spectra are plotted.

Figure 6 Accelerations response spectra

Figure 7 Displacements response spectra

From the modal analysis, the fundamental period of the structure is T1=2.56 s which places the response of the structure in the range of medium accelerations but large displacements. In Table 1 are presented for comparison the values of the bending moments and shear forces at the base of the tallest pier P5, but also the values of the horizontal displacement at the superstructure level following the response spectrum and linear time-history analyses. Only the first generated accelerogram was used at this stage in the time-history analysis. Table 1 Bending moments, shear forces and displacements.
Analysis type
Response spectrum Linear time-history Differences [%]

Bending moments M, [kNm] 201539 190477 -5.5

Shear forces V, [kN] 4677 4878 +4.1

Dsiplacements d, [m] 0.31 0.31 0

According to the values presented in table above it can be concluded that the internal forces on the cross section of the pier P5 are high, leading to high values of reinforcement percentage. Concerning the displacement value it is over the usual limits (0.20, 0.25m) that allow the use of common expansion joint devices. Thus, the goal of the study is first to decrease the values of the superstructure displacement at maximum 0.25m and second to adjust the values of the internal forces on the piers cross section. The tallest pier P5 will be monitored for this purpose. Improvement of the bridge behaviour under seismic loads claim the use of special bearing devices. In this study two types of isolators are used separately: lead rubber bearings (LRB) and friction pendulum systems (FPS). Finally, another aproach based on the use of TMDs (Tune Mass
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Dampers) placed inside the piers cross section is also accounted for. Considering the values of the internal forces on pier P5 cross section and of the superstructure displacement following nonlinear time-history analyses a comparison is made in order to establish the most effective solution to obtain the desired response of the structure. The study is made considering all five artifficially generated accelerograms matching with the acceleration response spectrum presented in figure 6. The LRBs and FPSs were placed at the top of all piers of the bridge. Both isolation systems LRBs and FPSs were modeled into the structural analysis program using nonlinear link finite elements. For the LRBs the rubber isolator element was chosen and for the FPSs the plastic Wen element was selected. For both isolation devices the force-displacement relationship was described using a bilinear curve. In figure 7, the theoretical function used to describe the nonlinear behaviour of the isolators is shown. Figure 8 represents the schemes of LRB and FPS bearings used into the analyses.

Figure 8 The function used for the isolators

Figure 9 Schemes of seismic isolators

In figure 8 Fmax, Dmax are the maximum force and the maximum displacement of the isolator, Fy, Dy are the yileding force and the yielding displacement, K1 is the initial stiffness, K2 is the post yield stiffness and Keff is the effective stiffness. The fundamental period of the structure is 2.56 s, outside of the amplification domain of the response spectrum. Starting from this value, the characteristics of the used isolators can be established. For the LRB isolators the following equations were used to find the basic charasteristics:

T
keff

m kstr
1 k PIERS kstr n k PIERS k str

(1) (2)

where T is the fundamental period of the structure, m is the modal mass, keff is the efective stiffness of one isolator, kPIERS is the bending stiffness of the piers and kstr is the overall stiffness of the bridge structure. Based on this value of keff from the Algasism catalogue the LRN D700 B750 Z550 was chosen, with =4% and G=0.9 MPa. The effective damping eff for this type of isolator is 30% and the maximum displacement is 140 mm. In this case, K1 is the lead core and K2 is the elastomer contribution respectivelly. For the friction pendulum system the equations used are as follows:

T
F

2
uV

R g
V D R

(3) (4)

keff
K1

F ; eff D uV ; K2 Dy

2
V R

u u D/R

(5) (6)

where R is the radius of the sliding surface; g is the gravity constant; F is the horizontal force taken by the friction pendulum system; u represents the dynamic friction constant in the range 3%12% according to [4]; V is the total vertical load on a isolator; D is the isolator displacement. For this case study the period of the isolator was chosen smaller (T=2.15 s) than the structure fundamental period in order to take into account also the piers contribution to the general displacement of the bridge. The resulted value for the radius of the sliding surface was R=1.15 m. Based on this equations and following nonlinear time history analyses using all five artificially generated accelerograms, the complete dynamic response of the bridge in terms of displacements and internal forces are obtained. In figures 10 and 11 the force-deformation plots are presented both for a LRB and a FPS on pier P4 using as input the first accelerogram.

Figure 10 Force-displacement plot for a LRB

Figure 11 Force-displacement plot for a FPS

Aa an alternative to the LRB and FPS isolators, in this stud y also the influence of TMDs (Tune Mass Dampers) on the dynamic response of the bridge was investigated. This devices are vibration absorbers attached to the primary oscilating system, in this case the bridge structure. In general they consist in a mass which is connected to the primary system through a oscilating system formed by a spring and a viscous damper acting in paralell. The accurate tunning of the frequency of the TMD with the frequency of the structure lead to introduction into the primary system of inertial forces, which will counterbalance its movements, the result being a reduction of displacements and internal forces of the primary system. While the displacements of the TMD are large, those of the primary system will be reduced. In this paper, the use of TMDs is proposed as an alternative to other types of isolators, because in some cases, the resistance capacity of the bearings do not allow to take large values of vertical reactions produced by static or dynamic actions. The TMDs were placed only on the two central piers, P4 and P5 respectivelly. The modeling of the TMD in performed numerical analyses is presented in figure 12. They were placed at the top of piers P4 and P5 and consist in two systems viscous damper-elastic spring which are connected through rigid elements. The mass is disposed in the middle as presentd in figure 12.

Figure 12 Scheme of the TMD used in the analyses

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According to [5] the otpimum frequency of the TMD should be in the range 95-99% of the frequency of the primary system. Knowing the fundamental frequency of the bridge fs and the value of the modal mass ms, the mass mt, the spring stiffness kt and the damping constant ct of the TMD can be established using the equations bellow:

ft

fs mt 1 ms
1 2 kt ; fs mt 1 2 ks ms

(7)

ft

(8)

3
opt

mt ms
3

(9)

mt 8 1 ms
2 f t ; ct

2mt

t opt

(10)

where ft, t and opt are the frequency, the circular frequency and the optimum damping ratio of the TMD. Using these equations the characteristics of the absorber were determined and inputed into the nonlinear time-history analyses. The ground motion was simulated using the five artificially generated accelerograms. Finally, the results obtained using accelerogram four, which lead to the largest values of horizontal displacement of the superstructure, were selected for comparison for all type of analyzed isolation devices and are summarized in the table 2 and in figure 13 bellow. Table 2 Horizontal displacements of the superstructure in meters
Input ground motion
Generated accelerogram number four Differences in % with respect to the values obtained on the structure with neoprene bearings

Structure with neoprene bearings 0.35 -

Structure with LRBs 0.19 -46

Structure with FPSs 0.18 -49

Structure with TMDs 0.23 -35

Figure 13 Time histories of the horizontal displacement of the superstructure Figures 14 and 15 show a comparison in terms of internal stresses on the piers P5 cross section computed at the base of the pier. These are absolute maximum or minimum values obtained from the envelope of the internal forces, resulted following the nonlinear time-history analyses performed for each of five accelerograms. The values in the figures 14 and 15 were obtained for the accelerogram four who leads to the maximum displacements of the bridge superstructure.

Figure 14 Bending moments (base of pier P5)

Figure 15 Shear forces (base of pier P5)

During the motion induced by the seismic action, the mass attached to the TMD exhibits large displacements which reduce significantly the overall displacements of the structure. Figure 16 shows time-history responses in terms of displacements for the mass of the TMD, for a point situated at the top of the pier elevation and for a point on the bridge superstructure.

Figure 16 Displacements of the TMD mass, pier and superstructure 5 CONCLUSION In this paper the behaviour under the seismic action of a steel bridge equipped with standard bearings, but also with special isolation devices, was investigated. For this purpose, several finite element models were built and analyzed by the add of linear response spectrum, linear and nonlinear time-history analyses. The ground motion was simulated using a design response spectrum function foreseen in the romanian norm P100-2006 for the site where the bridge is placed, but also five artificially generated accelerograms matched to comply with this response spectrum function. All analyses were performed on the structure equipped with standard elastomeric bearings (neoprene), but also on the structure equipped on all piers with lead rubber bearings (LRB) or with friction isolators (FPS) and with tune mass dampers only on the central piers P4 and P5. Because the fundamental period of the structure is outside the amplification domain of the response spectrum, the goal of the study is to establish the appropriate isolation device to be used in order to keep the superstructure displacement bellow 0.25 m. Thus, the use of common expansion joint devices is possible. The structure with standard elastomeric bearings exhibits large displacements at the superstructure level (0.35 m for accelerogram four) and also large stresses at the base of the piers. This because of the impossibility of the beearins to dissipate energy. By introducing the isolation devices a significant improvement in the bridge behaviour can be achieved. Thus, the superstructure displacements and the bending moments at the base of the piers can be reduced with almost 50% using FPSs, the reduction in terms of shear force being only arround 18% in the case of using LRBs. Globally, the FPSs seems to offer the best solution to improve the dynamic response of the bridge structure, both in terms of displacements and stresses on the piers cross section. Supplementary, the capacity of the FPSs system to restore the strructure near to undeformed position reccomends it for the future use to solve this kind of problems.
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Regarding the use of TMDs it can be concluded that their efficiency in terms of reducing displacements and stresses is smaller compaired to other two used devices. The tuning of a TMD is very complexe because of the large composition in frequency of the induced ground motion. To obtain a better behaviour, the TMD should be tuned for each range of significant frequency contained in recorded ground motion for real earthquakes. In this paper, the tuning of the TMD was made to fit on all five artificially generated accelerograms. Even thus, it can be observed that the reduction with respect to the structure equipped with standard elastomeric devices is, for displacements of 35%, for bending moments of 19% and for shear forces of 10%. Of course a problem can be the installation of such devices on bridges because their wheight and dimensions. REFEERENCES [1] Naeim, F. and Kelly, J.M. 1999: Design of Sesimic Isolated structures: from theory to practice, John Wiley&Sons, Inc., N.Y. [2] Chopra, A.K. 2007:Dynamics of Structures. Theory and Applications to Earthquake Engineering, Pearson Prentice Hall International. [3] Zekioglu, A., Darama, H. and Erkus, B. 2009:Performance-Based seismic design of a large seismically isolated structure: Istanbul Sabiha Gken Intrenational Airport Terminal Building. SEAOC 2009 Convention Proceedings ,409-427. [4] EPS, Inc. 2003: Technical characteristics of friction pendulum bearings, Vallejo, California, USA [5] Bachmann, H. Et al. 1995: Vibration problems in structures: practical guidlines, Birkhuser, Berlin [6] ***P100-2006 2006: Romanian Seismic Design Code-Part I: Design Provision for Buildings [7] *** SR-EN 1998-2. 2006: Design of structures for earthquake resistance. Part 2: Bridges [8] Computers and Structures Incorporated 2010: CSI Analysis Reference Manual for SAP2000, Etabs and Safe, Berkeley, California, USA.

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