Influence of tangential plasticity for elastoplastic behavior of a thin wall steel bridge pier under lateral bidirectional load paths

Abstract

A tangential plasticity model has been adopted to more accurate predictions of cyclic loading behavior of a thin wall bridge pier under the bidirectional lateral non-proportional loadings. According to comparing a numerical simulation result with an experimental result and that from the conventional plasticity, high applicability of the tangential plasticity model has been confirmed. Moreover, numerical analyses by the tangential plasticity model and the conventional one have been conducted to investigate the differences of the responses under other seven bidirectional cyclic loadings, the results indicate the importance of considering the tangential plasticity effect in order to achieve more accurate and reliable predictions under operational loading conditions.