Dynamic responses of bridges subjected to near‐fault ground motions

Abstract

Abstract The motivation of this paper is to study the dynamic behavior of bridge structural systems subjected to both near‐fault and far‐field ground motions. A highway bridge containing a hinge supported continuous girder with six concrete piers was selected for this study. The Chi‐Chi (Taiwan) earthquake was selected as a first set in this study to provide the near‐fault earthquake characteristics. On the other hand, another earthquake record was selected to illustrate far‐field earthquake characteristics for comparison. The results show that near‐fault earthquake ground motions cause more ductility demands and base shear than far‐field earthquake ground motions.