Contribution of local site-effect on the seismic response of suspension bridges to spatially varying ground motions

In this paper, it is aimed to determine the stochastic response of a suspension bridge subjected to spatially varying ground motions considering the geometric nonlinearity. Bosphorus Suspension Bridge built in Turkey and connects Europe to Asia in Istanbul is selected as a numerical example. The spatial variability of the ground motion is considered with the incoherence, wave-passage and site-response effects. The importance of site-response effect which arises from the difference in the local soil conditions at different support points of the structure is also investigated. At the end of the study, mean of the maximum and variance response values obtained from the spatially varying ground motions are compared with those of the specialised cases of the ground motion model. It is seen that each component of the spatially varying ground motion model has important effects on the dynamic behaviour of the bridge. The response values obtained from the general excitation case, which also includes the site-response effect causes larger response values than those of the homogeneous soil condition cases. The variance values calculated for the general excitation case are dominated by dynamic component at the deck and Asian side tower. The response values obtained for the site-response effect alone are larger than the response values obtained for the incoherence and wavepassage effects, separately. It can be concluded that suspension bridges are sensitive to the spatial variability of ground motion. Therefore, the incoherence, the wave-passage and especially the site-response effects should be considered in the stochastic analysis of this type of engineering structures.