Dynamic analysis of continuous multi-span bridge structure under the effect of travelling seismic waves

It is necessary to consider the effect of travelling waves during the seismic design of long-span bridge structures (Léger et al., 1990; Li and Shi, 2003). It has been found that whether the structural response is more critical under uniform earthquake excitation than under the effect of travelling waves would be dependent on the types of response, the dynamic characteristics and the structural configurations (Nazmy and Abdel-Ghaffar, 1992; Soyluk and Dumanoglu, 2000; Xu and Lee, 2007; Bahbouh et al., 2009; Bi et al., 2013). There is no simple rule to determine the critical structural response. As such, parametric analyses were performed for identification of critical design scenarios (Hao, 1998; Bi et al., 2010a, 2010b). Dynamic analysis of the structural responses needs to be conducted on a case by case basis.