Abstract
A report of recent severe earthquakes indicates that, in addition to the damage along longitudinal direction, lateral and rotation motions of bridge girders caused by pounding to adjacent girders can lead to unseating. This paper presents two multi-dimensional models that are practically suitable to precisely analyze pounding between bridge girders. One is a two-dimensional rigid body model, which is applicable to the analysis of spring-mass models. The other is a three-dimensional contact-friction model, which is developed by combining the concepts of the impact spring and contact analysis, and can be easily accommodated in finite element analyses. Two-dimensional girder pounding experiments were conducted and the motion was accurately measured using image analysis. Both models are found to well simulate the pounding effects in comparison with the experimental results.
