Effect of site condition on the seismic response of a fixed-end

deck steel arch bridge and the feasibility of the pushover method
Chengyu Liang
Department of Bridge Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, China
Smart Engineering Consultants, LTD., Taipei, Taiwan
Airong Chen
Department of Bridge Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, China

ABSTRACT: The elasto-plastic earthquake response of a 200m steel arch bridge with a
fixed-end deck, was investigated under different input wave types. The effect of ground type on
earthquake response is discussed in this paper. A pushover analysis was also carried out on the
bridge and the location of the damage to the arch rib exposed to the earthquake and the results
were compared against those of the elasto-plastic dynamic analysis. The results show that the
seismic damage to the long span deck steel arch bridge was less serious when found in good
alluvial ground and rock due to the longer natural period of the structure. The arch springing is
prone to damage under strong earthquakes. In addition, the pushover analysis was found to be
feasible in reproducing the seismic damage location, and the acting modes have little effect on
the results.

1 INTRODUCTION

Construction site conditions not only affect propagation properties of a seismic wave but also
change vibration characteristics of the structure and the dynamic input of the earthquake due to
interactions between the ground and the structure,. Therefore, in bridge design for earthquake
resistance, the effect of site condition on seismic structural response should be considered.
A large amount of research related to seismic resistance of steel arch bridge has already been
carried out, especially in Japan due to the frequent earthquakes. As an example, Nonaka et
al.( J. Sakai and K. Kawashima 2003) performed an elastic-plastic seismic analysis on a
half-through steel arch bridge by using fiber elements and investigated the plastic zone
development in the cross-section due to earthquake and its effect on the seismic structural
response. Nonaka et al.( T. Nonaka and A. Ali 2001) further investigated the seismic response
of a fixed-end deck steel arch bridge and discussed the use of dampers to mitigate the effect of
earthquake load. Through experiments, Morishita (T. Nonaka, T. Usami and H. Yoshino 2003)
investigated steel arch bridge behavior and found that the dampers used had mitigated the
earthquake effect for this type of bridge. On the other hand, Sakai et al.( K. Morishita, K. Inoue
and K. Kawashima 2004) used a computational model accounting for the effect of axial force
to analyze the elastic-plastic seismic response of a concrete arch bridge and investigated the
coupling effect of axial force and bending moment during earthquake. For the purpose of
increasing the lateral resistance of the steel arch bridge to vibration, Usami et al.( T. Usami et
al. 2004) made use of the fiber model to calculate the seismic response of the steel arch bridge,
considering the effect of dampers. These investigations have contributed to the understanding
of vibration resistance properties and fracture mechanisms of steel arch bridges due to
earthquakes, but the comparative effects of earthquake wave input conditions on structural
response have not been discussed.
Arch bridges behave differently to simply supported and continuous beams in that vibration
modes are more complex and that arch bridges have a greater influence on high order vibration
modes. There is a coupling effect between the horizontal and vertical earthquake motions, and
additional bending moments caused by structural deformation in the beam-column system.
Under earthquake loading, the axial force in the arch rib can change due to curving and the
642 ARCH10 6th International Conference on Arch Bridges

moment-curvature relationship cannot be determined by the nonlinear history of the

cross-section.
The use of the pushover method to model the damage process of complicated structures has
been widely used in the design of vibration resistant structures. This method of calculation
does not require a dynamic seismic response analysis; its calculation process is simple; and it
has the advantage of clearly identifying the damage process. This method has great potential to
be used in the design of arch bridges for vibration resistance. Analyzing the effect of various
loading conditions will be valuable to research relating to the feasibility of the pushover
method.
With the purpose of analyzing the effect of site conditions on the earthquake response of a
steel arch bridge, this study used an exemplary project of a long span fixed-end deck steel arch
bridge and adopted a calculation method for seismic structural response that incorporated the
effect of nonlinearity to analyze the seismic structural response by inputting earthquake waves
that are based on site conditions. The effect of various site conditions on the structural seismic
resistance has been analyzed and compared. Based on the differences in the structural
response, positions of damage, and the extent of damage, a discussion is provided to address
the effect of site conditions on the earthquake resistance characteristics of a long-span steel
arch bridge. Recommendations for design of a fixed-end deck steel arch bridge subjected to
various site conditions are also given. Finally, a simple feasibility analysis of the pushover
method is presented.

2 A COMPUTATION MODEL FOR THE BRIDGE & THE SEISMIC INPUT CONDITION
2.1 Description of Bridge
The Da-Yu-Lin bridge in Taiwan is used as an example for this study. The details of this
project have been presented in (Cheng-Yu Liang et al. 2009) and a brief description is given
below.

Location of expansion joint Location of expansion joint

Arch rib central axis
Diaphragm
plate

Longitudinal rib
19x150

Elliptical opening
460x760

Unit:m

(a) (b)

Figure 1: Steel arch bridge model with span length of 200m: (a) Side View, (b) Cross-Section of Arch
Rib

Fig.1 provides a side view of the Da-Yu-Lin Bridge.It is a fixed-end deck steel arch bridge
with two hinges and a span of 200m. The girder length is 326m and the width of the bridge
deck is 10m. The deck is made of a concrete plate supported by four steel I beams. The I
beams are connected by bracings in the transverse direction. Two steel arch rib boxes are used
on this bridge and are connected by lateral framing system. Each arch rib has a single box and
a single cell cross-section with dimensions of 0.9mwidth2.75mheight. Aside from P3 and
P14, the piers have square cross-sections of 0.8m0.8m and the steel plate has a thickness of
25mm. The vertical posts, P3 and P14, have a 1.2m1.2m square box-girder cross-section with
a plate thickness of 32mm. The ends of posts P8 and P9 are rigidly connected to the girder and
the arch rib. All the other posts are rigidly connected to the arch rib but are hinged at the main
girder. The study on structural seismic responses was performed by modeling the arch bridge
structure from P3~P14.
Chengyu Liang and Airong Chen 643

2.2 Site Conditions

In order to compare the effects of different site conditions on the seismic response of the arch
bridge, the sites were divided into 3 ground types: I, II, and III, where hard ground falls into
Type I for , general ground falls into Type II, and soft ground falls into Type III..
In order that the seismic condition fed into the model could be representative of the
prescribed resistance factor, the analysis was carried out using the same seismic resistant
design conditions. The current seismic design specifications for highway bridges require that,
for a large-span bridge, seismic waves are to be inputted into the seismic resistant foundations.
For convenience, the specification for seismic design of Japanese highway bridges were used
as the input for the model's seismic waves. In this way, several seismic loads have the same
equivalent seismic strength and satisfy the same seismic requirement under various site
conditions. Due to a larger damage power of a close-distance earthquake, the seismic wave
inputs were selected from close-distance and shallow earthquakes. Fig.2(a), (b), and (c) show
the inputted seismic wave forms of hard (I), general (II), and soft (III) site conditions
respectively. Three different seismic waves were used for each site condition. The maximum
acceleration for each wave is between 0.7-0.8g. Fig.3 shows the response spectrum for all
seismic waves viscosity ratio is 5% with the horizontal axis, t denoting the period. The
figures show all three waves of the same site condition as having the same acceleration
response characteristics. The site characteristic periods for the three site types are 0.7s, 1.22s
and 1.52s respectively.

10 10
5 5
A /m.s -2

-2
A /m.s

0
0
-5 0 10 20 30 40
t /s -5 0 10 20 30 40
t /s
-10
-10
10 10
5 5
A /m.s -2

-2
A /m.s

0 0
-5 0 10 20 30 40
-5 0 10 20 30 40
t /s t /s
-10 -10
10 10
5 5
A /m.s -2

-2
A /m.s

0 0
-5 0 10 20 30 40 -5 0 10 20 30 40
t /s t /s
-10 -10

(a) (b)
10
5
A /m.s -2

0
-5 0 10 20 30 40
t /s
-10
10
5
A /m.s -2

0
-5 0 10 20 30 40
t /s
-10
10
5
A /m.s -2

0
-5 0 10 20 30 40
t /s
-10

(c)

Figure 2 : Earthquake waves e : (a)Type I Site, (b)Type II Site, (c)Type III Site
644 ARCH10 6th International Conference on Arch Bridges

Figure 3 : Response spectrum of earthquake wave

3 THE STRUCTURAL COMPUTATION MODEL & ITS DYNAMIC

CHARACTERISTICS
3.1 Bridge Model
The seismic structural response was calculated by using ABAQUS 6.7 in the finite element
formulation. The model for the 3D truss system of the whole bridge is shown in Fig.4. The
geometrical and material nonlinearities were taken into consideration in the calculation. A
bi-linear model was used for the stress-strain relationship. The yield stress was taken as
350MPa and the initial elastic modulus as 2.0105Mpa. After yielding had occurred, the slope
of the stress-strain curve was 1% of the initial elastic modulus showing that strain-hardening
was taken into consideration. For structural elements in which plastic deformation could occur,
such as deformation in arch rib and vertical posts, elastic-plastic fiber element was used in the
simulation. Other structural elements such as the deck, lateral framing, etc. were simulated by
using an elastic beam model.
In order to investigate the effect of initial internal forces, the earthquake response was first
calculated under the action of initial internal forces. The calculation was separated into two
steps. First, the initial internal forces were considered and then the calculation of nonlinear
earthquake response was performed.

Figure 4 : Non-linear dynamic analysis model

3.2 Characteristics of Free Vibration

Characteristics of free vibration within the bridge has already been discussed in (Cheng-Yu
Liang, Airong Chen 2009). A brief description is provided below.
Fig.5 shows the major in-plane vibration modes. The corresponding natural frequencies,
participation factors and effective mass ratios are listed in Table 1. Due to the complicated
vibration modes present in an arch bridge, the vertical and horizontal vibrations are coupled
and the effective mass ratios for the first stage and second stage in-plane vibration modes are
Chengyu Liang and Airong Chen 645

all smaller than 20%. The anti-symmetric mode has a large participation factor in the
longitudinal vibration, and the symmetric mode has a large participation factor in the vertical
vibration.
It can be deduced from Table 1 that the anti-symmetric mode has an important effect on the
characteristics of the arch bridge vibration.

Figure 5 : Shapes of the major in-plane modes of the bridge

Table 1 : Natural frequencies, participation factors and effective mass ratio of in-plane modes
Freq. Effective mass ratio
Participation factors
Mode %
Hz Longi.Dir. Vert.Dir. Longi.Dir. Vert.Dir.
2 0.6577 0.5752 0.0066 15.39 0.00
10 2.1335 1.1985 0.0752 17.95 0.07
17 3.4235 -0.7439 0.0216 39.96 0.03
21 4.4962 -0.3569 0.0082 3.70 0.00

4 EARTHQUAKE RESPONSE AND ANALYSIS OF THE BRIDGE

4.1 Earthquake damage
Fig.6 shows the damage distributions for the three types of site conditions subject to three
different kinds of seismic waves. For Type I conditions, the damage concentrated on the
vertical posts at the top of the arch (not shown in the figure). The arch ribs did not reach the
yielding condition. For Type II site conditions, the damage concentrated on the base of the arch,
side posts, and vertical posts on top of the arch. For Type III conditions, the damage
concentrated on the base of the arch. This was due to the peak period in the major mode of
vibration (the anti-symmetric mode), which was 1.2s. However, the characteristic period of
Type I condition was smaller than the critical periodsubjecting the arch rib to relatively smaller
vibration resulting in a lack of damage from the earthquake.
The previous results show that site conditions have a definite effect on the location of
seismic damage. Nevertheless, independent of the type of the inputted seismic wave, the
damage to the arch bridge was found to be at the base of the arch. Therefore, we can see
that maintaining the ductility in the cross-section of the arch base can greatly improve the
resistance of the steel arch bridge to earthquake.
Furthermore, under the same site conditions, all three seismic waves have the same periodic
properties and caused similar damages to the structure.

4.2 Displacement
Fig.7 shows the computational results of the longitudinal and vertical displacements at
qauarter-span (L/4) and mid-span respectively. The figures indicate that the displacements of
Type I sites are generally small, but displacements of Types II and III sites are larger and
similar to each other. The results show that strong and hard site conditions give smaller
displacement responses those of other site conditions and that the vibration resistance for the
structure at this site condition is better than at the other two site conditions.
646 ARCH10 6th International Conference on Arch Bridges

Seismic wave II-1 in action

Seismic wave II-2 in action

(a)

(b)
Seismic wave II-3 in action
(Same damage location for all three seismic waves)

Figure 6 : Plastic zone when subjected to earthquake action : (a) Seismic Damage of Type II Site, (b)
Seismic Damage of Type III Site

In addition, it can be seen from the results that, although only horizontal earthquake loads were
inputted into the structural response calculation, the calculated vertical displacement at L/4
exceeded the horizontal displacement. This result indicates that the vertical earthquake force
could not be neglected and special attention should be given to the seismic resistance design of
arch bridges in Type II and III site conditions.

4.3 Internal Force

Fig.8 shows the seismic response time history curves of axial force and bending moment acting
on the cross-section of the right arch base. In the figure, the axial force is expressed relative
to the yielding force, Ny of the cross-section, and the bending moment is expressed relative to
the yielding moment, My. It can be seen from the figure that, for Type I sites, the ratio for
maximum axial force is 0.285, and the ratio for maximum moment is 0.877; for Type II site,
the ratio for maximum axial force is 0.220, and the ratio for maximum moment is 1.047; and
finally for Type III site, the ratio for maximum axial force is 0.217, and the ratio for maximum
moment is 1.023. These results indicate that the vibration curves of the axial force for the three
Chengyu Liang and Airong Chen 647

types of site conditions look very similar, with the Type I curve having a slightly larger
magnitude. However, larger differences are found in the moment curves between Type I sites
and Type II and III sites, which indicate that the deformation occurred in the arch rib has led to
additional bending moment.

Type I Site Type II Site

Type III Site

(a)

Type I Site Type II Site

Type III Site

(b)

Figure 7 : Displacement responses of the arch rib : (a) Longitudinal Displacement, (b) Vertical
Displacement
648 ARCH10 6th International Conference on Arch Bridges

Type I Site

Type II Site

Type III Site

Figure 8 : Axial force and bending moment responses at the cross-section with the most severe seismic
damage.

5 THE FEASIBILITY OF THE PUSHOVER METHOD IN THE DAMAGE ANALYSIS OF

ARCH BRIDGES

To investigate the feasibility of the pushover method in the analysis of seismic damage
mechanisms, the pushover method was used herein to analyze the damage mechanisms of the
bridge, accounting for the effect of loading pattern. The calculation considered three different
loading patterns as shown in Fig.9: anti-symmetric pattern for seismic load (together with
horizontal and vertical loads, M-1); anti-symmetric pattern for horizontal seismic load
(together with horizontal load only, M-2); and horizontal seismic load applied in a reversed
triangular pattern (M-3). In Fig.10 mi is the mass of node i,
i = hi h0 (1)
where h0 is the height from the arch base to the bridge deck; hi is the height of node i;
hi and vi are the horizontal and vertical displacements at the mid node i of the
anti-symmetric vibration mode respectively. Based on a maximum value of 1.0, the maximum
horizontal displacement is 0.552 and the maximum vertical displacement is 1.0. Therefore, for
the M-2 loading input, the loading pattern was input after subtracting an amount of 0.552.
Chengyu Liang and Airong Chen 649

Fhi = {mi hi }
Fvi = {mi vi }

(a)

Fhi = {mi hi }

(b)

Fhi = {mi i }

(c)

Figure 9 : The seismic load input pattern in the pushover method calculation : (a)Based on second stage
vibration pattern (planar anti-symmetric) plus horizontal and vertical loads, (b) Based on second stage
vibration pattern (planar anti-symmetric) plus horizontal load, (c) Horizontal load inputted in a reversed
triangular pattern

Using the three aforementioned loading patterns, the calculated plastic zone was found to
appear initially at the arch base cross-section for all cases. Fig.10 shows the relationship
between the strain and the loading parameter at a location where plastic deformation first
occurred for all three loading patterns. Parameter corresponds to a response to maximum
seismic acceleration. The responses to initial yielding acceleration for the three loading
patterns are 21.56, 29.95 and 21.63 respectively, where the results for M-1 and M-3 are
basically the same.
Loading parameter

Initial strain at completion of bridge

Strain

Figure 10 : The strain development at arch base calculated using the pushover method
650 ARCH10 6th International Conference on Arch Bridges

The results show that the relationship between the strain in the damaged cross-section and the
loading parameter is the same for all three load patterns, indicating a similar damage process
for the different loading patterns. The outcome of loading based on a vibration pattern falls
between the results of the other two loading methods. Comparing the various results of seismic
responses, it can be seen that the location of seismic damage in the arch rib obtained by use of
the pushover method is similar to that from the response of the nonlinear earthquake
time-history.

6. CONCLUSIONS

(1) The effect of site conditions on the seismic response of the arch bridge is influenced by
the anti-symmetric vibration frequency. Although the magnitude of the response spectrum for
the Type I site is the largest amongst the sites considered, the arch rib is subjected to the
smallest earthquake loading where the characteristic period of the site is smaller than the
period of anti-symmetric natural vibration of the structure;
(2) The coupling effect of vertical vibration cannot be neglected in the seismic response of
an arch bridge, especially in the cross-section at the L/4 span point. Under the action of
horizontal seismic force, the vertical seismic displacement is larger than the horizontal seismic
displacement;
(3) Although the arch rib is mainly a compressive member in the structural design,
deformation of the arch rib is a main cause of plastic yielding of the structure under earthquake
condition;
(4) The pushover method can provide a good reference in the seismic damage analysis of a
steel arch bridge. Although different input modes can influence the calculated results, overall,
they lead to consistent estimation of the initial plastic yielding cross-section and acceleration
value at yielding.

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J. Sakai, K. Kawashima, 2003,Seismic response of a reinforced concrete arch bridge taking account of
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