The Earthquake Engineering Online Archive

Inelastic seismic response of extended pile shaft supported bridge structures

Hutchinson, Tara C.; Boulanger, Ross W.; Chai, Yuk Hon; Idriss, I. M.

PEER-2002/14, Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center, University of California, Berkeley, 2002-12, 215 pages (400/P33/2002-14)

This report summarizes a study of the inelastic seismic response of bridge and viaduct structures supported on extended pile shafts. Specifically, the work presented includes three main sections. First, the transverse response of reinforced concrete pile shafts is studied by finite element modeling of a series of full-scale soil-pile lateral loading tests using a beam-on-nonlinear-Winkler approach. Second, dynamic FE analyses are used to assess the performance of extended pile shaft supported bridge structures under strong, long-duration and/or long-period ground motions. Third, the dynamic FE analysis results are compared with current nonlinear static analysis procedures (e.g., R-mu subscript Delta-T relations), and an alternative "mean spectral displacement" approach for estimating inelastic displacements from the elastic response spectrum of the surface motion is evaluated.

Available online: http://peer.berkeley.edu/publications/peer_reports/reports_2002/0214.pdf