• Steel and Composite Structures
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• 제17권4호
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• pp.405-429
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• 2014

In this paper, it is aimed to determine the structural behavior of suspension bridges considering construction stages and different soil conditions. Bosporus Suspension Bridge connecting the Europe and Asia in Istanbul is selected as an example. Finite element model of the bridge is constituted using SAP2000 program considering existing drawings. Geometric nonlinearities are taken into consideration in the analysis using P-Delta large displacement criterion. The time dependent material strength of steel and concrete and geometric variations is included in the analysis. Time dependent material properties are considered as compressive strength, aging, shrinkage and creep for concrete, and relaxation for steel. To emphases the soil condition effect on the structural behavior of suspension bridges, each of hard, medium and soft soils are considered in the analysis. The structural behavior of the bridge at different construction stages and different soil conditions has been examined. Two different finite element analyses with and without construction stages are carried out and results are compared with each other. At the end of the analyses, variation of the displacement and internal forces such as bending moment, axial forces and shear forces for bridge deck and towers are given in detail. Also, displacement and stresses for bridge foundation are given with detail. It can be seen from the analyses that there are some differences between both analyses (with and without construction stages) and the results obtained from the construction stages are bigger. It can be stated that the analysis without construction stages cannot give the reliable solutions. In addition, soil condition have effect on the structural behavior of the bridge. So, it is thought that construction stage analysis using time dependent material properties, geometric nonlinearity and soil conditions effects should be considered in order to obtain more realistic structural behavior of suspension bridges.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• 제15권1호
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• pp.15-39
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• 2013

The sensitivities of a structural response due to variation of its design parameters are prerequisite in the majority of the algorithms used for fundamental problems in engineering as system uncertainties, identification and probabilistic assessments etc. The paper presents the concept of probabilistic sensitivity of suspension bridges with respect to near-fault ground motion. In near field earthquake ground motions, large amplitude spectral accelerations can occur at long periods where many suspension bridges have significant structural response modes. Two different types of suspension bridges, which are Bosporus and Humber bridges, are selected to investigate the near-fault ground motion effects on suspension bridges random response sensitivity analysis. The modulus of elasticity is selected as random design variable. Strong ground motion records of Kocaeli, Northridge and Erzincan earthquakes are selected for the analyses. The stochastic sensitivity displacements and internal forces are determined by using the stochastic sensitivity finite element method and Monte Carlo simulation method. The stochastic sensitivity displacements and responses obtained from the two different suspension bridges subjected to these near-fault strong-ground motions are compared with each other. It is seen from the results that near-fault ground motions have different impacts stochastic sensitivity responses of suspension bridges. The stochastic sensitivity information provides a deeper insight into the structural design and it can be used as a basis for decision-making.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• 제22권5호
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• pp.1001-1018
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• 2016

The purpose of this paper is to compare the structural responses obtained from the stochastic analysis of a suspension bridge subjected to uniform and partially correlated seismic ground motions, using different spatial correlation functions commonly used in the earthquake engineering. The spatial correlation function employed in this study consists of a term that characterizes the loss of coherency. To account for the spatial variability of ground motions, the widely used four loss of coherency models in the literature has been taken into account in this study. Because each of these models has its own characteristics, it is intended to determine the sensitivity of a suspension bridge due to these losses of coherency models which represent the spatial variability of ground motions. Bosporus Suspension Bridge connects Europe to Asia in Istanbul is selected as a numerical example. The bridge has steel towers that are flexible, inclined hangers and a steel box-deck of 1074 m main span, with side spans of 231 and 255 m on the European and Asian sides, respectively. For the ground motion the filtered white noise model is considered and applied in the vertical direction, the intensity parameter of this model is obtained by using the S16E component of Pacoima Dam record of 1971 San Fernando earthquake. An analytically simple model called as filtered white noise ground motion model is chosen to represent the earthquake ground motion. When compared with the uniform ground motion case, the results obtained from the spatial variability models with partial correlation outline the necessity to include the spatial variability of ground motions in the stochastic dynamic analysis of suspension bridges. It is observed that while the largest response values are obtained for the model proposed by Harichandran and Vanmarcke, the model proposed by Uscinski produces the smallest responses among the considered partially correlated ground motion models. The response values obtained from the uniform ground motion case are usually smaller than those of the responses obtained from the partially correlated ground motion cases. While the response values at the flexible parts of the bridge are totally dominated by the dynamic component, the pseudo-static component also has significant contributions for the response values at the rigid parts of the bridge. The results also show the consistency of the spatial variability models, which have different characteristics, considered in this study.