4th International Conference on Earthquake Engineering

Taipei, Taiwan
October 12-13, 2006
Paper No. 142

ANALYTICAL SEISMIC ASSESSMENT OF HIGHWAY BRIDGES

WITH SOIL-STRUCTURE INTERACTION
Oh-Sung Kwon1 and Amr S. Elnashai2
the Meloland Road Over-crossing (MRO)
bridge.
ABSTRACT
The paper describes a new approach and its practical implementation for the analysis of
the inelastic
dynamic response of bridges with soil-structure interaction using multiple analysis
platforms. The
development is presented through an application test bed; the Meloland Road Overcrossing (MRO)
bridge. The structure was heavily instrumented and has been shaken several times by
significant
earthquakes, rendering it an ideal benchmark to test the accuracy of the new
development. The
approach embankments, abutments, and supporting pile groups are modeled as threedimensional
finite element idealizations in OpenSees with realistic soil material models. The bridge
structure is
modeled in Zeus-NL, the Mid-America Earthquake Center analysis platform. The mode
shape and
fundamental properties of the soil-structure system are compared with those determined
from system
identification of the bridge based on measured ground motion. Response history analysis
is
conducted by distributed computation of geotechnical and the structural model on four
separate
computers, representing four geographically distributed simulation sites. In addition to
the earthquake
assessment observations given in the paper, the results and comparisons indicate that
the analysis of
large interacting structure-foundation-soil systems using distributed computation is an
extremely
powerful tool that provides accurate results at considerable savings in computing effort.
The
presented framework is also suitable for hybrid-distributed NEES-like simulations.
Keywords: Soil-Structure Interaction, Distributed computing, Bridge seismic response.

INTRODUCTION
Soil deposits supporting structure have mainly two effects on the behavior of
systems subjected to
earthquake loading: (i) local site amplification and (ii) soil-structure interaction
(SSI) effects. To
account for both effects most accurately, the structure as well as a large soil
domain should be
modeled as a whole. This type of full SSI analysis requires a tremendous amount
of computational

effort. At the current state of the development of computational environments,

there have been only a
few attempts to analyze the full soil-structure system, such as the Humboldt Bay
Bridge Project
(Zhang et al., 2004) used as a test bed in the Pacific Earthquake Engineering
Research Center. The
challenges reported indicate that running many such analyses for the purposes
of probabilistic
assessment for example is still in the realm of the future. Many practical
approaches account for the
SSI effect by modeling the stiffness of supporting soil and applying surface
ground motions. This
approach is approximate in that the inertial interaction between soil mass and
structural mass is not
accounted for and also the stiffness of the soil foundation is mostly based on
empirical relationships.

DESCRIPTION OF THE MRO BRIDGE

The MRO Bridge was instrumented with 26 accelerometers in 1978 and 6 more
instruments in 1992.
Twelve instruments placed as a downhole array were also installed to monitor
propagation of waves
from deep soil layers to surface. The 1979 Imperial Valley Earthquake (M L = 6.6)
was the largest
recorded event at the site with a peak ground acceleration of 0.3 g. The recorded
ground motion from
this earthquake has been extensively studied in the 1980s and 1990s (Norris
1986; Werner 1987;
Vrontinos et. al., 1993; Zhang and Makris, 2001 among many others). These
investigations as well as
recorded ground motions from five earthquake events are used to validate the
analytical approach
presented in this paper. The MRO Bridge is located over Interstate 8
approximately 0.5 km from the
fault rupture of the 1979 Imperial Valley earthquake. The bridge consists of two
spans of pre-stressed
box-girder decks monolithically connected to the center pier. The abutments are
placed on fill. Seven
piles support each abutment. Each side of abutment has 5.9 m of wing-wall. The
pier at the center of
the bridge has a diameter of 1.5 m and is 7.9 m is high from the top of piles. A
total of 18 longitudinal
reinforcement bars are used in the pier, the foundations of which are supported
on 25 timber piles
spaced at 0.91 m. Figure 1 shows the configurations of MRO Bridge with the
location of
accelerometers in the transverse direction. Reference is made to Zhang and
Makris (2001) for more
information about the MRO Bridge.

Central Pier Foundation

In this study, an inelastic three-dimensional finite elements (FE) model is
assembled for the pile group of
the central pier. Timber piles have diameters of 32 cm at the top and 20 cm at
the bottom. The modulus of
elasticity of the piles is 1.24x107 kPa following Maragakis et al. (1994). In the FE
model, the piles are
assumed to be prismatic with rectangular cross section, to reduce the mesh size.
Therefore, modulus of
elasticity is adjusted so that the flexural rigidities are matched. Strength
parameters such as friction angles
and cohesion are important for the large strain response of soil while the elastic
shear modulus and bulk
modulus have dominant roles in the small strain response. Norris (1986) reported
friction angles and
cohesion of the studied site. Recently, as part of the ROSRINE project (Anderson,
2003), field and
laboratory tests of the MRO Bridge site were conducted. Although dynamic
properties of the soil are
reported in the literature, not all the parameters required for the soil material
model in OpenSees were
available. Hence in this study the unknown material properties are inferred from
the cohesion of clay and
the friction angle of sand. In Maragakis et al. (1994), the clay layers are located
between 0~2.7 m, 6
m~10.7 m, and 15m and below grade. Each clay layer has cohesion of 35.9 kPa,
76.6 kPa, and 86.2 kPa,
respectively. Based on these values, shear moduli are chosen as 60,000 kPa,
150,000 kPa, and 150,000
kPa, for each clay layer, respectively, following Yang et al. (2005). Poissons ratios
of the clay layer are
assumed to be 0.4. The other intermediate layers are silty sand with friction
angle of 32 to 33 degree and
relative density of 45 ~ 52%. All layers with cohesionless soil are in the range of
medium sand (Yang et
al., 2005).
It is expected that the behavior of a pile group is more governed by global soil
pile group interaction
rather than soilpile interaction of individual pile, thus interface elements are not
used for this analysis.
Cylindrical soil medium with diameter of 48 m is modeled, which is 10.5 times
larger than the pile cap
dimension. The depth of the soil medium is 17 m, Figure 2. All elements in the
soil mesh are 8-node brick
elements. The top of the pile cap is controlled by a control node, which connects
the top nodes of pier
with rigid frame elements.

The material properties of the embankment fill are based on Zhang and Makris
(2001) where density of

s = 1600 kg/m3 and shear wave velocity of Vs = 110 m/sec are used. These
values correspond to shear
modulus of 19.4 MPa, which corresponds to soft clay in Yang et al. (2005). In this
study, pressure
independent material (Von Mises type material) is used with the properties shown
in Figure 3. All the
elements are modeled with 8 node brick elements. The dimension of supporting
ground is 124 m by 105
m in plane with 18 m of depth. The overall dimension of abutment is similar to
the dimensions described
in previous studies. Total 1675 elements are used to model supporting ground,
embankment, abutment,
and pile groups. A control node is placed at the top of abutment and tied with top
nodes on abutment with
rigid frame element.
Eigen value analysis is conducted for the embankment model. The first
transverse and longitudinal modes
are shown in Figure 4. The 1st mode is in longitudinal direction with fundamental
period of 0.319 sec. The
2nd mode is in transverse direction with fundamental period of 0.314 sec. These
modal properties will be
used in the following section to define lumped mass of embankment for hybrid
simulation.
Bridge Deck and Pier
The bridge experienced the 1979 Imperial Valley earthquake without noticeable
damage. Since the
structure experienced a few earthquakes, it is assumed that there are cracks in
the concrete section
reducing its stiffness. Youngs modulus of 22 GPa for concrete is assumed as in
the report by Zhang and
Makris (2001). The youngs modulus of cracked section was reported by Douglas
and Reid (1982,
Ec = 20 ~ 25 GPa) and Dendrou et al. (1985, Ec = 20 GPa), so the selected values
is within the range of
previous studies. The density of concrete is assumed to be 2400 kg/m3. For the
deck, an equivalent section
with the same area (A) and moment of inertia (Ix, and Iy) as the actual structure is
used. The torsional
stiffness is not considered when determining the equivalent section as structural
displacement is
dominated by flexural deformation of pier and deck.
Therefore an effective embankment mass is lumped at the abutment-bridge
connection. The effective mass of the embankment is determined from its natural
frequency and stiffness.
From the initial stiffness evaluation, the transverse stiffness of embankment is
741 MN/m. Assuming that
the mass is lumped at the bridge-embankment connection, the mass can be
calculated from the transverse
period of embankment as M = kT 2/(4 2) = 1848 ton.

The damping ratio was identified from recorded ground motion, which has impact
type acceleration at the
early stage of earthquake event using the simple approach of logarithmic
decrement. The damping ratio at
the fundamental period of the structure is identified to be 4%.

ID

Date
yr/mo/
dy

ML

Lat

Long

Depth
(km)

GM01

79/10/
15
99/10/
16

6.6

32.6
14
34.5
94

115.3
18
116.2
71

12.1

GM02

7.1

6.0

Epic
.
Dist.
(km)
21.5

PGA
(g)

Availabl
e
record1

0.3

216.
0

0.01
6

GM03
GM04
GM05
GM06

00/04/
09
00/06/
14
00/06/
14
02/02/
22

4.3
4.2
4.5
N/A

32.6
92
32.8
96
32.8
84
N/A

115.3
92
115.5
02
115.5
05
N/A

10.0

10.4

5.1

14.6

4.9

13.5

N/A

N/A

0.04
3
0.01
5
0.00
9
0.03
9

B, D
B, D
B, D
B, D