Abstract
The purpose of this study is to evaluate seismic performance of column and rahmen type steel piers with thin walled box cross-section during strong earthquake excitation.
We describe the method to replace the piers into SDOF systems, and the numerical response analysis of these SDOF systems by use of five earthquake motions. Based on the numerical results, we discuss how the difference of the type and height of piers, and the ratio of thickness to width of cross-sectional plate affect on the total number of times of yielding, maximum plastic displacement, hysteretic and input energy and the relationship between hysteretic energy and elastic maximum velocity. We also discuss the effect on the earthquake damage index, as defined by the authors, and found out that this index is very useful to evaluate the damage including the collapse of the piers.
