Analytical model of isolated bridges considering soil-pile-structure interaction for moderate earthquakes

The coupled soil-pile-structure seismic response is recently in the spotlight of researchers because of its extensive applications in the different fields of engineering such as bridges, offshore platforms, wind turbines, and buildings. In this paper, a simple analytical model is developed to evaluate the dynamic performance of seismically isolated bridges considering triple interactions of soil, piles, and bridges simultaneously. Novel expressions are proposed to present the dynamic behavior of pile groups in inhomogeneous soils with various shear modulus along with depth. Both cohesive and cohesionless soil deposits can be simulated by this analytical model with a generalized function of varied shear modulus along the soil depth belonging to an inhomogeneous stratum. The methodology is discussed in detail and validated by rigorous dynamic solution of 3D continuum modeling, and time history analysis of centrifuge tests. The proposed analytical model accuracy is guaranteed by the acceptable agreement between the experimental/numerical and analytical results. A comparison of the proposed linear model results with nonlinear centrifuge tests showed that during moderate (frequent) earthquakes the relative differences in responses of the superstructure and the pile cap can be ignored. However, during strong excitations, the response calculated in the linear time history analysis is always lower than the real conditions with the nonlinear behavior of the soil-pile-bridge system. The current simple and efficient method provides the accuracy and the least computational costs in comparison to the full three-dimensional analyses.