Hybrid simulation of a seismically-excited four-span curved bridge

A hybrid simulation of a four-span curved bridge structure was carried out for a bi-directional earthquake. The physical testing was conducted in the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) Laboratory at the University of Illinois. One small-scale and two large-scale piers were physically tested in which the tops of these piers were subjected to all possible actions (3 displacements and 3 rotations) using the Illinois NEES Loading and Boundary Condition Boxes (LBCBs), while a computational model of the bridge deck was concurrently simulated. Through a hybrid simulation framework, combined actions of bridge piers and system-level responses were explored for this structure subjected to bi-directional loadings using four performance-based scaling levels of an earthquake record. In this test, a high-precision positioning control scheme was performed to compensate for the flexibility of the support structure of the LBCBs. Extensive traditional and advanced non-contact sensors were used to monitor the local and global structural behavior of the bridge piers. Utilizing a post-processing toolbox developed in-house, the detailed performance of bridge piers were derived and represented graphically. With this investigation, the hybrid simulation of this curved bridge was successfully conducted from which numerous insights were obtained on the response of the four-span curved bridge structure.