Numerical Synthesis Method of Ground Motions for Seismic Design of Near-Fault Bridge Engineering

Abstract

© 2017 American Society of Civil Engineers. Spatially extended long-span bridges, which crossing an active fault or located near fault area are subjected to both static step-like deformation and dynamic ground motions. Due to there are lack of near-fault recordings, numerical simulations of near fault time-histories are required. This paper proposes a hybrid synthesis method combining the modified statistical Green's function and theoretical Green's function. It considers both the dynamic vibration and static terms (namely permanent displacement) of the near-fault strong ground motion, also the simulation simply considered the complete seismic waveforms including the near-, intermediate-, and far-field terms. Then by this synthesis method, near-fault ground motions are calculated as the input time-histories to analyze seismic response of a simple bridge. The results well showed the applicable of this method provides a useful reference for seismic design guidelines for near-fault bridge engineering.