Evaluation of pounding countermeasures and serviceability of elevated bridges during seismic excitation using 3D modeling

This paper conducts elaborate analyses to evaluate the effectiveness of pounding countermeasures and the serviceability of elevated bridges subject to severe ground motions using detailed 3‐dimensional non‐linear modeling of an entire bridge structure system. A three‐span elevated steel bridge is selected for a case study. The peak and residual magnitude of gaps between girders and the maximum shear deformations of bearings are computed and used in the serviceability evaluation. The results show that under proper configurations the mitigation devices work effectively in reducing pounding actions in both the longitudinal and rotational directions. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.