pacific nw transportation consortium region 10 Pactrans

Real-Time Hybrid Experimental-Numerical Simulation of Bridge Infrastructure Subject to Cascading Earthquake-Tsunami Hazards

PI: Barbara Simpson (OSU), barbara.simpson@oregonstate.edu, ORCID: 0000-0002-3661-9548

Co PIs: Minjie Zhu

AMOUNT & MATCH: $40,000 from PacTrans; $40,000 Match

PERFORMANCE PERIOD: 8/16/2020 – 8/15/2022

STATUS: Complete

CATEGORIES: Bridges, Structures, Infrastructure, Earthquake, Tsunami, Natural Disaster

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DESCRIPTION: Following the Tohoku earthquake, many Japanese bridges experienced uplift of the deck off the bridge piers due to the subsequent tsunami loading. However, if the connection between the pier and deck was retrofitted to resist deck uplift, then the bridge instead experienced significant damage to the pier during the tsunami, because the pier was already damaged from the earthquake (piers are usually designed to exhibit inelastic response for seismic design).

The research proposed would be the first application of hybrid simulation to tsunami hazards, including previous damage from earthquake loading. To study bridge pier response to cascading earthquake-tsunami loading, the proposed RTHS approach partitions a bridge assembly such that the physical waves and bridge pier reside in a physical sub-assembly and the remaining bridge, including damage from seismic loads, resides in a numerical sub-assembly. The hybrid physical-numerical sub-assemblies then represent a complete bridge assembly, which is impossible to test experimentally due to the capacity of existing wave facilities.