Behavior of a steel bridge with large caisson foundations under earthquake and tsunami actions

摘要

The main focus of this study is to numerically investigate the influence of strong earthquake and tsunami-induced wave impact on the response and behavior of a cable-stayed steel bridge with large caisson foundations, by assuming that the earthquake and the tsunami come from the same fault motion. For this purpose, a series of numerical simulations were carried out. First of all, the tsunami-induced flow speed, direction and tsunami height were determined by conducting a two-dimensional (2D) tsunami propagation analysis in a large area, and then these parameters obtained from tsunami propagation analysis were employed in a detailed three-dimensional (3D) fluid analysis to obtain tsunami-induced wave impact force. Furthermore, a fiber model, which is commonly used in the seismic analysis of steel bridge structures, was adopted considering material and geometric nonlinearity. The residual stresses induced by the earthquake were applied into the numerical model during the following finite element analysis as the initial stress state, in which the acquired tsunami forces were input to a whole bridge system. Based on the analytical results, it can be seen that the foundation sliding was not observed although the caisson foundation came floating slightly, and the damage arising during the earthquake did not expand when the tsunami-induced wave impact is applied to the steel bridge. It is concluded that the influence of tsunami-induced wave force is relatively small for such steel bridge with large caisson foundations. Besides, a numerical procedure is proposed for quantitatively estimating the accumulative damage induced by the earthquake and the tsunami in the whole bridge system with large caisson foundations.