Seismic damage of long span steel tower suspension bridge considering strong aftershocks

The residual capacity against collapse of a main shock-damaged bridge can be coupled with the aftershock ground motion hazard to make an objective decision on its probability of collapse in aftershocks. In this paper, a steel tower suspension bridge with a main span of 2000 m is adopted for a case-study. Seismic responses of the bridge in longitudinal and transversal directions are analyzed using dynamic elasto-plastic finite displacement theory. The analysis is conducted in two stages: main shock and aftershocks. The ability of the main shock-damaged bridge to resist aftershocks is discussed. Results show that the damage caused by accumulated plastic strain can be ignored in the long-span suspension bridge. And under longitudinal and transversal seismic excitations, the damage is prone to occur at higher positions of the tower and the shaft-beam junctions. When aftershocks are not large enough to cause plastic strain in the structure, the aftershock excitation can be ignored in the seismic damage analysis of the bridge. It is also found that the assessment of seismic damage can be determined by superposition of damage under independent action of seismic excitations.