A Study of Seismic Resistant Design for Base-Isolated Bridges(II)

The base isolation technique and its benefits in reducing the transmitted earthquake energy into a structure have gained increasing recognition during the last two decades. Unfortunately, the current available design procedures, especially for base-isolated bridges, seem inadequate and too restrictive. As a result, practical design procedure still relies upon a series of deterministic time history analyses. In this study, the evaluation of the possibility of the normal mode method to predict the nonlinear seismic responses of base isolated bridges has been performed. The applicability has been examined through the numerical approach with isolator's elastic or plastic states of the base isolated bridges. Numerical results show that the 1st. mode period and the various responses are varied with the state but are conversed. And, the result show that the normal mode method is applicable to predict the seismic responses and to design the babe isolated bridge. Various analysis method to bridges with bilinearized hysteresis isolator and various pier heights are evalulated.