Mitigation of the seismic response of a cable-stayed bridge with soil-structure-interaction effect using tuned mass dampers

A cable-stayed bridge (CSB) is one of the most complicated structures, especially when subjected to earthquakes and taking into consideration the effect of soil-structure-interaction (SSI). A CSB of a 500 m mid-span was modeled by the SAP2000 software and was subjected to four different earthquakes. To mitigate the harmful effect of the vibration generated from each earthquake, four mitigation schemes were used and compared with the non-mitigation model to determine the effectiveness of each scheme, when applying on the SSI or fixed CSB models. For earthquake mitigation, tuned mass damper (TMD) systems and spring dampers with different placements were used to help reduce the seismic response of the CBS model. The pylons, the mid-span of the deck and the pylon-deck connections are the best TMDs and spring dampers placements to achieve an effective reduction of the earthquake response on such bridges.