| Abstract: | Unseating of bridge girders/decks during earthquakes is very harmful to the safety and serviceability of bridges. Evidence from recent severe earthquakes indicates that in addition to damage along longitudinal direction, lateral displacement and rotation of bridge girders caused by pounding to adjacent girders can also lead to unseating. To simulate this effect, 3D modelling of the dynamic performance of whole bridge structures, including pounding, is needed strongly. This paper presents a 3D model that is practically suitable to precisely analyse pounding between bridge girders. Experiments have been conducted to verify the proposed pounding model. The 3D non‐linear modelling of steel elevated bridges is also discussed. A general‐purpose dynamic analysis program for bridges, namely dynamic analysis of bridge systems (DABS) has been developed. Seismic analyses on a chosen three‐span steel bridge are conducted for several cases including pounding as a case study. The applicability of the proposed pounding model is illustrated by the computations. The effects of poundings on the response of bridge girders are discussed and the computation results are given. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
