Seismic performance assessment of irregular self-centering rocking dual-column piers
摘要
Geometric irregularities caused by topographical variations often result in unequal pier heights in bridge systems.These height differences make it challenging to achieve consistent seismic performance. While self-centering (SC) rocking systems have shown strong potential for enhancing seismic resilience, their performance in irregular bridge configurations has not been thoroughly examined. This study aims to evaluate the seismic behavior of concrete bridges incorporating SC rocking dual-column piers with height irregularities. For this purpose, three types of dual-column piers with unequal heights were considered: conventional reinforced concrete (RC) piers and SC rocking piers with or without external energy dissipators. The SC rocking piers were examined under three tendon-stress-based design conditions: (a) prevention of simultaneous collapse, (b) equal drift demand, and (c) simultaneous uplift. First, nonlinear cyclic analyses were conducted to assess the behavior of the models. Subsequently, incremental dynamic analyses (IDA) were performed using selected earthquake records. Fragility curves were developed based on drift ratio and residual drift as the engineering demand parameters (EDPs). The results indicate that incorporating external dissipators in irregular SC dual-column piers substantially decreases both maximum drifts and residual drifts.