Pounding Control Design of Elevated Bridges Under Seismic Exication

Abstract

Pounding during sever earthquakes can result in catastrophic structural damage in adjacent superstructure segments in elevated bridge.. Pounding may yield detrimental forces that could result in large displacement of deck and potential catastrophe of bridge. Past many earthquakes have done sever damage to bridges due to pounding. Aim of this thesis is to analyse pounding between superstructure segments of an elevated bridge induced by seismic waves. In this thesis a 3D model of a bridge is modelled in CSI Bridge software. In the model we provide expansion joint at every span of bridge. When bridge was analysed in software found that there was very high axial force, moment, stress, displacement in that bridge. So to overcome that forces another model has been created. In this model lead rubber bearing has provide at every expansion joint and this result in decreasing in forces. But the forces were still very high. Than rubber isolator was introduced at expansion joints. This results in decreasing in large displacement and axial force. Than model forces were improved by introducing high damping rubber bearing in expansion joint. All the four models high damping rubber bearing has very high stiffness to reduce pounding force. So in this thesis we were able to reduce pounding forces by providing best suited material properties in expansion joint.