Analysis of Multifactor Damage Mechanism on Bridge Under Near-Fault Seismic Excitation

An [Formula: see text] 7.4 earthquake struck China Maduo County in 2021, and it was a typical strike-slip rupture earthquake with clear directionality. A near-fault bridge named the Yematan No.2 Bridge suffered severe seismic damage in the Maduo earthquake. To analyze the seismic damage mechanism of the Yematan No.2 Bridge, the detailed finite element model of the bridge upline and downline was established in this study. To analyze the coupled effects of soil liquefaction, traveling wave effects, and seismic inertial forces, and to make the numerical simulation results better reflect structural seismic responses under real-site liquefaction conditions, this paper proposes a simplified method for simulating ground motions in liquefiable sites. This method integrates key effects induced by liquefaction into the ground motion simulation process. The detailed finite element model of the bridge upline and downline was established in this study. Then, the near-fault seismic bedrock motion of three directional components was synthesized by using the velocity pulse method to simulate the low-frequency pulse component and the stochastic finite-fault method to simulate the high-frequency component. The seismic ground motion was inversely computed by the equivalent linear method, and the field residual displacement measurement was used to optimize the seismic ground motion amplitude. Furthermore, to study the soil liquefaction effect on the bridge seismic damage, a simplified model based on planar one-dimensional wave theory was employed, and the seismic ground motion on the soil liquefaction site was computed through the site transfer function by using the inverse Fourier transform. Finally, the bridge seismic response analysis was conducted under non-uniform seismic excitation to consider the seismic traveling wave effect. The results show that the bridge’s severe seismic damage is caused by the following multiple factors: (i) the fault rupture directionality of the near-fault earthquake results in the significant girder displacement along the bridge; (ii) the differential displacements between the upline and downline are also attributed to the soil liquefaction effect; (iii) the seismic traveling wave effect of strong seismic motion exacerbates the bridge seismic damage.