AbstractCoastal highway bridges are usually supported by pile foundations that are submerged in water and embedded into saturated soils. Such sites have been reported susceptible to scour hazard and probably liquefied under strong earthquakes. Existing studies on seismic response analyses of such bridges often ignore the influence of water-induced hydrodynamic effect. This study assesses quantitative impacts of the hydrodynamic effect on seismic responses of coastal highway bridges under scour and liquefaction potential in a probabilistic manner. A coupled soil-bridge finite element model that represents typical coastal highway bridges is excited by two sets of ground motion records that represent two seismic design levels (i.e., low versus high in terms of 10%-50 years versus 2%-50 years). Modeled by the added mass method, the hydrodynamic effect on responses of bridge key components including the bearing deformation, column curvature, and pile curvature is systematically quantified for scenarios with and without liquefaction across different scour depths. It is found that the influence of hydrodynamic effect becomes more noticeable with the increase of scour depths. Nevertheless, it has minor influence on the bearing deformation and column curvature (i.e., percentage changes of the responses are within 5%), regardless of the liquefiable or nonliquefiable scenario under the low or high seismic design level. As for the pile curvature, the hydrodynamic effect under the low seismic design level may remarkably increase the response by as large as 15%–20%, whereas under the high seismic design level, it has ignorable influence on the pile curvature.
Probabilistic seismic response analysis of coastal highway bridges under scour and liquefaction conditions: does the hydrodynamic effect matter?
