ABSTRACT
Single pylon cable-stayed bridges have been widely used in engineering practice, due to their appealing esthetics and excellent spanning capacity. This chapter evaluates the seismic performance of a reinforced concrete (RC) single pylon cable-stayed bridge isolated by friction sliding bearings under bi-directional ground motions. A 3D numerical model, consisting of the soil-pile interaction, the fiber elements and the multi-layer shell elements, was built to investigate its dynamic responses. Three different types of friction sliding bearings were implemented at the base of pier to mitigate the seismic responses of the bridge under strong ground motions. The results of the nonlinear time history (NLTH) analyses indicate that friction sliding bearings can effectively reduce the base shear and the bending moment of the RC pier, as well as the seismic responses of substructure, at the cost of increasing the absolute displacement of the deck. In addition, a direct displacement based seismic design procedure for base isolated cable-stayed bridge was proposed, and the effectiveness and the accuracy were verified by a series of NLTH analyses.
