A Study on An Energy Absorbing Bridge Restrainer for Simple Steel Girders and Piers System against Heavy Earthquakes

Abstract

This paper proposes to apply steel bellows as energy absorbing restrainers for steel girders and piers system. The shoes of the bridge are intentionally collapsed as fuse members for heavy earthquakes in order to decrease seismic forces acting to piers, and after collapses of shoes, inertia forces and response displacements of girders are restrained by energy absorption due to bellows plant is deformation. Two span, three span and four span simple steel girders supported steel piers are modeled as mul t i- degree freedom systems by nonlinear springs andmass elements. In-plane elasto-plastic dynamic response analyses are carried out to examine and evaluate the effect and performance of the proposal design method. The results show that the proposal method may become effective seismic design method.