SEISMIC RESPONSE OF RC BRIDGE WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE

TO THE EFFECT OF BEARINGS

Y. TAKAHASHI and H. IEMURA

Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
A. KANEYOSHI
Konoike Construction Co., Ltd., Osaka, Japan
Y. SAWANO and Y. MATSUURA
Chuo Fukken Consultants Co., Ltd., Osaka, Japan

Abstract
In response analysis of bridges, normally little attention has been given to bearings.
But based on the investigation of the Great Hanshin Earthquake, many bearings
were seriously damaged. On the other hand, some RC piers were not heavily
damaged in case of bearing failure. This is why it is of primary concern in this
study to investigate the RC bridge failure in relation to the bearing characteristics.
This paper firstly summarizes the damage condition of bearings in a highway.
Then, the seismic response analysis of highway bridges with bearing is carried out
and the results are compared to the model in which bearing is not considered.
We also report the analysis about the effect of bearing failure, including sliding
and pin bearing, on the seismic response of RC bridges in order to explain the
collapse mechanism.
Keywords: Bearing, earthquake, highway, RC continuous bridge, seismic
response analysis.

1 Introduction

The Hyogo-ken Nanbu earthquake was of magnitude 7.2 and occurred at 5:46 a.m.
on January 17, 1995 in Hanshin area, one of the most densely populated areas in
Japan. This earthquake caused heavy damage to highway bridges. Destructive
earthquake have not occurred in urban areas in recent years, and this earthquake
revealed that there are various critical issues in seismic design. In order to avoid
damage in the future, it is necessary to clarify its mechanism.
According to the new design specification of highway bridge[1], revised after
this earthquake, base isolators are recommended more positively than
conventional steel bearings. But many existing bridges have steel bearings and a
few research of the effect of them has been done.
This paper starts with the report of the investigation of damaged bridges.
Next we analyze 3-span continuous bridges and describe the mechanism of failure.
And also we propose a new analytical bearing model.

2 Damage of RC bridges due to earthquake

Many RC bridges related to highway and railway suffered damage as a result of

the Hyogo-ken Nanbu earthquake. The results of the investigation of bridges and
the damage location of superstructures are shown in Table 1 and 2 respectively [2].
In these tables, we use the damage index: As is the most severe damage, which
means the necessity of reconstruction. And D means no damage. From these
tables, we can recognize that many RC bridges were severely damaged and
superstructures were mostly damaged at their bearings.
The results of the investigation of 3-span continuous bridges with RC piers are
shown in Fig. 1. This shows that severe damaged piers are 27 which accounted
for 12% of the total. Among the severely damaged piers there are 17 middle
piers, which have not only fixed bearings but also sliding bearings.
Result from our investigation of damage of urban highway bridges, especially
3-span continuous bridges, suggests that piers heavily damaged have not only
fixed bearings but sliding bearings too, which seem strange from the point of
design view. In usual design phase, considering that inertia load that applies to
pier's top is friction, it seems to be so small to cause the critical state. In order to
clarify the damage mechanism, it is necessary to analyze the whole bridge models,
including superstructures and bearings.

3 Effect of bearing on seismic design

Based on the highway specifications[1], a bearing is designed by the seismic

Table 1 Results of investigation

Damage Index
As A B C D Total
RC pier 65 (6%) 84 (8%) 107 (11%) 246 (24%) 510 (50%) 1012
Steel pier 3 (2%) 8 (5%) 12 (7%) 112 (69%) 28 (17%) 163
Bearing 0 (0%) 220 (23%) 195 (20%) 206 (21%) 348 (36%) 969

Table 2 Damage location of superstructure

Damage Index
As A B C D Total
Bearing 0 (0%) 112 (7%) 142 (8%) 62 (4%) 1364 (81%) 1680
Joint 0 (0%) 4 (0%) 24 (2%) 38 (3%) 1317 (95%) 1383
Middle of span 0 (0%) 1 (0%) 5 (0%) 2 (0%) 1672 (100%) 1680
 Severe Damaged Only Movable Piers
27 Piers 2 Piers

Damaged Damaged
Piers Middle Piers
218 Piers 17 Piers

Both Movable
The Others Only Fixed Piers and Fixed Piers
191 Piers 7 Piers 8 Piers

Fig. 1 Results of investigation of 3-span continuous bridge

coefficient method. But because of the mechanism and the material, it is said
that it would be broken by twice the force of the seismic coefficient (0.2 g). The
design of bearings are also related to the design of bridges, including themselves.
At the position of sliding bearing, a bridge is divided into design vibration units
which are used to calculate an applied inertia force (Fig. 2). Since the force of a
sliding support pier is less than that of a fixed support as is evident from Fig. 2,
the dimension of the section can be designed to be small. Therefore if the sliding
function is lost, the pier is in danger of an unexpectedly big loads.

4 Analytical sliding bearing models

4.1 Overview
In an usual analysis, little attention has been given to bearings. They are usually
used for the boundary condition of piers or even if they would be modeled, it has a
little influence in the response because of its small reaction. But according to the
investigation, as we mentioned above, it seems that we should take into account
bearings more positively. In this section, we introduce various bearing models
and their features.

F
M M M

Fig. 2 Design vibration unit

 force force

displ. displ.

movable range

Fig. 3 Loop of bearing II Fig. 4 Loop of bearing III

4.2 Bearing model I

The simplest sliding bearing model is to ignore its existence. This means that the
bearing is only used for the boundary condition of piers, so the superstructure and
the pier are separated at its location.

4.3 Bearing model II

In an usual seismic design phase, a load between the superstructure and the pier
would be considered as a friction force (Coulomb friction). In order to simulate
the friction force, a rectangle displacement-load relationship (Fig. 3) or a velocity
-load relationship is used in numerical analysis. This model is the most general.
In this study, we use 0.05 as the friction coefficient µ.

4.4 Bearing model III

When a big load is applied to a bridge, the sliding support would lose its sliding
ability because of limitation of the movable range. When the displacement
reaches its limit, the force that applies to the pier would increase rapidly. Fig. 4
shows the movable range considering model. In this study, we use 10 cm as
movable range.

4.5 Bearing model IV

This model takes into account the damage of the sliding bearing itself. In general
once the bearing suffered damage, the dynamic specification of the bridge system
changes. This is why we make a post-damaged bearing model. However, since
a very few testing of a sliding bearing has been reported, we must adopt some

movable range force force

design load

displ. displ.

Disp. Limit. Equp. design load

Coulomb Friction

Fig. 5 Image of bearing IV Fig. 6 Loop of bearing IV

 42000 75000 42000

M F M M
16435 16665

300 300 (mm)

Moment (MNm)

Moment (MNm)
200 200
Ultimate
Yield Yield
100 100
Ultimate
Crack Crack
0 0
0 0.002 0.004 0.006 0 0.002 0.004 0.006
Curvature (1/m) Curvature (1/m)

Fig. 7 Overview of the objective 3-span continuous bridge

assumptions. The most important assumption is as follows: Once a sliding

bearing suffered damage, the bearing become fixed support. This assumption
present the most critical situation for piers, because the whole superstructure's
inertia force would be applied to them. This model consists of a sliding plate and
displacement limitation mechanism (Fig. 5). This hysteresis curve is shown in Fig.
6, which includes two kind of hysteresis. Once the load exceeds the design
strength of the displacement limitation mechanism, the hysteresis changes into a
linear type.

5 Bridge used for analysis

The bridge used in the analysis is a highway elevated 3-span continuous bridge
(Fig. 7). The height is about 17 m, and the span lengths are 42, 75 and 42 m.
It consists of a fixed bearing at the middle pier and sliding bearings at the other
piers. Its foundation is supported on piles and the soil condition is good.
This bridge is located in the high intensity area of the Hyogo-ken Nanbu
earthquake and has suffered severe damage on its middle sliding support pier, but
was not so heavily damaged on the other piers.

6 Seismic response analysis

6.1 Input motion

No earthquake was recorded at the bridge location, so for the analysis we used the
mainshock recorded at JR Takatori Station, whose soil condition is similar to that
of the site of interest. This record presents a maximum peak acceleration of
666.2 gal in its EW component. The time history is shown in Fig. 8.
 



  





    




Fig. 8 Input earthquake (JR Takatori record - EW component)

16 17 18 19
13 14 15

9 10 11 12
5 6 7 8

1 2 3 4

Fig. 9 Analytical model of bridge

6.2 Method of analysis

The analytical model is presented in Fig. 9, which is a multi-DOF frame model.
The soil is also modeled as three springs at the bottom of piers. In order to deal
with the nonlinearity of the RC bridge pier, Takeda model is used, which takes
into account the crack, yield and ultimate states. The bearings are also modeled
as nonlinear springs, as was previously mentioned.
The dynamic time history analysis is adopted as numerical method, and the
step by step integration is performed using Newmark method ( =0.25).

6.3 Modal analysis

When the sliding bearing is broken, the modes of the bridge change and so does
the specification of vibration. In order to clarify the fundamental specification,
the modal analysis is carried out.
Two bridge models are analyzed. One is the separated model with sliding
bearings of model I. In this case the bridge presents no damage. The other one
is the fixed model, in which all the bearings are considered fixed, and resulting the
bridge damaged to some extent. The results of the modal analysis is that the first
eigen period of the separated model is about 0.66 second and that of the fixed
model is about 0.38 second. The acceleration response spectra along with these
eigen periods is shown in Fig. 10. This figure suggests that if sliding bearings
would be damaged earlier than piers, the vibration mode changes and the load
applied to piers becomes about twice. If we consider that bearings wouldn’t be
damaged, it is possible that actual the load on piers is greater than results of
analysis.
 


  
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Fig. 10 Response spectra with first eigen periods

6.4 Case studies

To establish the above bearing models’ feature and their effect to RC piers, a
simple bridge model is analyzed. This model neglects the effect of foundation
and soil interaction.
Figs.11-14 shows P-∆ response of the sliding bearing and M-φ responses of
middle piers. From these figures, we can easily recognize two types of failure
mechanism: Model I and II (Type I) and Model III and IV (Type II). Type I
shows that the sliding support pier doesn't suffer damage and the damage
concentrates on the fixed support pier. On the contrary, the sliding support pier
of Type II is damaged and the damage of the fixed support pier is less than that of
Type I. This result tells us that at failure, the sliding bearing becomes fixed and
distributes the inertia load to each pier. The results of this analysis suggest that
considering movable range of the sliding support piers has a great influence on the
total damage, making it easy to explain the observed damage. Furthermore it is
shown that the friction force on the sliding bearing has little influence.
Therefore, if a bridge is analyzed under severe condition, we should take the
movable range of the sliding bearing into account.

6.5 Time history response analysis

Based on case studies, it is desirable to take the movable range into account when
we consider a severe earthquake, so next we analyze the full bridge model
considering the movable range and explaining the response more in detail.
The result of maximum response is shown in Table 3. From this table, we
can recognize that the section forces of both fixed and sliding support piers exceed
their flexural and shear strength respectively. These results are same as the real
damage of the bridge.
Fig. 15 shows the displacement response of the top of the sliding middle
support pier and Fig. 16 shows shear force response of the bottom. According to
Fig. 16, this pier suffered the shear failure as soon as the first mainshock impulse.
At this time the bearing were out of its movable range.
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Fig. 11 Results of analysis using bearing model I

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Fig. 12 Results of analysis using bearing model II

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Fig. 13 Results of analysis using bearing model III

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Fig. 14 Results of analysis using bearing model IV

Table 3 Maximum response of analysis
Pier Fixed Support Sliding Support
Max. acceleration (gal) 667 641
Top Max. velocity (kine) 40.5 60.7
Max. displacement (cm) 8.90 13.59
Max. moment (MN·m) 144.38 84.61
Yield strength (MN·m) 136.49 72.00
Bottom Ultimate strength (MN·m) 175.52 102.30
Max. shear force (MN) 15.94 11.54
Shear strength (MN) 7.02 5.92


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Fig. 15 Displacement time history


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Fig. 16 Shear force response time history

This result which supports the assumption is obtained and can explain the actual
failure of the sliding support pier.

7. Collapse mechanism

The analysis above suggests one of the collapse mechanisms of RC continuous

bridges during the Great Hanshin Earthquake and we could successfully explain
the actual failure of the bridge with which we are concerned.
At the beginning, the first main shock impulse of the earthquake struck the
bridge and the movable bearing was broken because of the large relative
displacement between the superstructure and the pier. Next, having the movable
 1. The movable bearing damaged.
2. The Inertia load applied to the pier.

3. The bending and shear failure

of fixed support pier occurred.

4. The bending and shear failure

of movable support pier occurred.
Fig. 17 Collapse Mechanism

bearing lost its sliding function, the big inertia load of the superstructure was
applied on the pier directly. Therefore, the pier was damaged since it has not
been designed to resist large horizontal loads. On the other hand, the fixed
support pier had not suffered heavy damage because of the load distribution on
each pier. This mechanism is illustrated in Fig. 17.

8. Conclusion

The objective of the study was to analyze 3-span continuous RC bridges with
movable bearing models and to clarify the collapse mechanism of damaged
bridges during the Great Hanshin Earthquake. The analysis using various
bearing models suggested that the movable range had a great influence on the
response of sliding support piers. The damage of sliding support pier could not
be explained by ordinary bearing models. Using a bearing model which takes
into account the movable range, the analysis of the damaged bridge was carried
out and the results explained the collapse mechanism, that is, that the failure of a
movable bearing caused the severe damage of its pier.

9. Acknowledgment

This research was supported by the Hyogo-ken Nanbu Earthquake Investigation

Committee of Kansai Branch of the Japan Society of Civil Engineers and the
Japan Concrete Institute.

10. References

1. Japan Road Association (1996), Design Specifications of Highway Bridges -

Part V Seismic Design.
2. Committee of Earthquake Engineering, JSCE (1996), The 1995
Hyogoken-Nanbu Earthquake.