Seismic Pounding effect in Bridges with High Piers
MENG Qingli1
1. Institute of Engineering Mechanics,
China earthquake administration,
Harbin 150080, China
iemqlmeng@126.com
Abstract—in this paper, In order to study the seismic pounding of
high-pier bridges in the mountainous areas of Chinese Western
zone, a fiber element model of a bridge was established, and the
GAP cells were intercalated in expansion joints between main
bridge and approach bridge in the high-pier bridges, followed by
a detailed analysis of its natural vibration characteristics.
Furthermore, by analysis and comparison, the seismic pounding
response and its effects on the bridge were discussed under
different earthquake motion. The analysis results indicate that
the seismic pounding effect is related with the natural period of
the bridge’s each part and inputted earthquake motion’s
characteristic, and could be beneficial to one part of the bridge,
to some extent.
Keywords- Bridge with high piers; seismic pounding; pounding
effect
I. INTRODUCTION
With the landform restriction in Chinese western zone,
where there are a lot of mountains, the bridges with high piers
are the general type in this zone. With much different natural
dynamic characteristic of high-pier bridges’ each part, seismic
poundings is easy to happen in expansion joints, which can
lead to local or whole damage, such as girder damage, bearing
damage, and girder falling etc. In the past decade years, it is
common occurrence that the seismic poundings led to damage
of bridges, for instance, the impact destroy between decks and
abutments in 1971 Sam Fernando earthquake, the brittle failure
of one elevated bridge’s piers and decks resulted from seismic
poundings in 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, and pounding
  
  

Figure 1. one high-pier bridge (unit: m)
978-1-4244-9171-1/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE
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Yin Xia2
2. Institute of Engineering Mechanics,
China earthquake administration,
Harbin 150080, China
yin_xia_happy@126.com
damages of one No.5 highway bridge’s piers and expansion
joints in 1994 Northridge earthquake, and the girder damage,
bearing damage, and girder falling of Miao Zi Ping high-pier
bridge partly resulted from seismic poundings in 2008
WenChuan earthquake.
A lot of researchers had studied the Seismic pounding in
bridges [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6], they think the seismic pounding
effects are related with the natural period of the bridge’s each
part and inputted earthquake motion’s characteristic, and the
seismic pounding is the one main reason result into bridges’
damage. But, the seismic pounding effect in high-pier bridges
was studied scarcely ever.
In this paper, In order to study the seismic pounding of
high-pier bridges in the mountainous areas of Chinese Western
zone, a nonlinear model of a high-pier bridge was established
in MIDAS/CIVIL infinite element program, Furthermore, by
analysis and comparison, the seismic pounding response and its
effects on the bridge were discussed under different earthquake
motion.
II. MODELING
One high-pier bridge is shown in figure 1, which total span
is 600m, width is 12m, in which the main bridge is three
spans (90m+170m+90m) continuous RC rigid frame bridge,
the two approach bridges is three spans (3×40 m) continuous
simple supported girder bridge. Expansion joints were located
between main bridge and approach bridge in the high-pier
bridges.
    

 The computing model was modeling in MIDAS/Civil,
shown in figure 2, in which, girders was simulated with girder
element; and piers were simulated with fiber cell, bilinear
hysteresis loop model is adopted as the constitutive model of
steel fiber cell in piers, and the constitutive model of core zone
concrete in pier adopted the hysteresis loop model considering
hooping effect; each bearing adopted nonlinear hysteresis loop
model; the GAP cells were intercalated in expansion joints
between main bridge and approach bridge in the high-pier
bridges.

Figure 2. a high-pier bridge mode

longitudinal and transverse direction is listed in table 1.

III. NATURAL VIBRATION CHARACTERISTIC
The former three natural period of this high-pier bridge in

TABLE 1 THE NATURAL PERIOD OF THIS HIGH-PIER BRIDGE˄UNIT:S˅

mode longitudinal direction transverse direction
1 2.51 4.08
2 1.85 2.70
3 1.76 1.97

IV. SEISMIC POUNDING ANALYSIS

4.1 The effect of seismic pounding
The pounding (with gap cell in modeling, the stiffness of gap
cell is3.74×108 N/m, and the clearance of gap cell is 0.17m)
and no pounding (without gap cell in modeling) analysis in
this high-pier bridge were carried out under El Centro
earthquake motion, the results were shown in table 2, 3 and 4.

TABLE 2 THE PEAK ACCELERATION OF THE MAIN BRIDGE’S GIRDER (UNIT:m/S2)

Mid-part of mid-
Location Left end Left pier location Right pier location Right end
span
Without pounding 1.495 1.348 1.392 1.417 1.379
With pounding 2.637 2.268 1.820 2.135 6.748

TABLE 3 THE PEAK ACCELERATION OF APPROACH BRIDGE’S GIRDER (UNIT:m/S2)

The short The high
The mid-span of The mid-span of The mid-span of the Crossover
Location abutment pier pier
the first span the second span third span pier location
location location
Without Left approach girder 1.567 1.533 1.460 1.541 1.514 1.520 1.549
pounding Right pproach girder 1.696 1.677 1.552 1.676 1.696 1.674 1.547
With Left approach girder 7.077 6.643 5.633 4.889 4.989 5.981 3.450
pounding Right pproach girder 5.869 5.600 4.790 4.027 4.127 4.526 6.817

TABLE 4 THE PEAK ACCELERATION OF THE TOP OF PIERS (UNIT:m/S2)

The long The short
The short The long
pier of pier of
pier of Left pier of Left Left Crossover Left pier of Right pier of right
location right right
approach approach pier main bridge main bridge Crossover pier
approach approach
bridge bridge
bridge bridge
Without pounding 4.364 4.247 3.125 1.632 1.385 3.471 4.324 4.687
With pounding 4.364 4.247 3.125 1.847 2.067 3.471 4.324 4.687

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 The Peak acceleration of the main bridge’s girder and
approach bridge’s girder with pounding and without pounding
was list in table 2&3, the Peak acceleration of the top of piers
with pounding and without pounding were listed in table 4.
The contrast by these results indicated, seismic pounding
magnified markedly the peak acceleration of main bridge’s
and approach bridge’s girder, especially on the latter, maybe
resulted from the less mass of the latter than that of the former;
besides, the top’s accelerations of each pier was not affected
markedly by seismic pounding, which mainly resulted from
Accel. (g)
the small energy of short-duration impulse pounding and the
isolation effect of bearing in approach bridges.
4.2 Pounding effect under different earthquake motion
In the following, this high-pier bridge was computed in
longitudinal direction, with gap cell (stiffness is 3.74h108
N/m, and clearance is 0.10m), under three earthquake motions
(El Centro-PGA=0.36 gǃNorthridge-PGA=0.36 g and
Parkfield-PGA=0.36 g) respectively (shown in figure 3), the
results were listed in table 5, 6 and 7.

Time (s) Frequency (Hz)

a) The time history and frequency spectrum of El Centro

Accel. (g)

Time (s) Frequency (Hz)

b) The time history and frequency spectrum of Northridge

Accel. (g)

Time (s) Frequency (Hz)

c) The time history and frequency spectrum of Parkfield

Figure 3. The time history and frequency spectrum of three earthquake motions

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 TABLE 5 THE PEAK VALUE AND TIME OF POUNDING CELL (GAP) UNDER DIFFERENT EARTHQUAKE MOTIONS
Left gap cell Right gap cell
earthquake motion Pounding degree
Pounding force ×106 N time s Pounding force ×106 N time s
First 3.71 6.28 3.30 5.04
Second 7.55 8.90 12.59 7.32
Third 7.41 11.86 11.61 10.04
El Centro
Fourth 12.70 14.80 11.19 12.88
Fifth 3.34 17.62 8.35 15.94
Sixth 4.16 19.06
First 6.44 31.96 5.48 28.02
Second 4.08 40.06 9.21 30.44
Northridge
Third 1.56 38.68
Fourth 3.23 41.30
First 10.86 9.70 16.95 11.00
Second 6.88 12.88 1.99 14.60
Parkfield
Third 12.32 15.92 13.20 17.48
Fourth 4.78 18.76

TABLE 6 THE MAXIMUM DISTORTION OF POUNDING CELL (GAP) UNDER DIFFERENT EARTHQUAKE MOTIONS (UNIT:m)
earthquake motion Left gap cell Right gap cell
El Centro 0.0068 0.0067
Northridge 0.0034 0.0049
Parkfield 0.0066 0.0091

TABLE 7 THE LONGITUDINAL DISPLACEMENT OF GIRDERS UNDER DIFFERENT EARTHQUAKE MOTIONS (UNIT: m)
The mid-span of the second span of The mid-span of the second span of
earthquake motion The mid-span of main bridge
left approach bridge right approach bridge
El Centro 0.2038 0.2804 0.2854
Northridge 0.1516 0.1586 0.1430
Parkfield 0.3063 0.2627 0.3507

According to table5 and table 6, some conclusion can be
attained: under El Centro earthquake motion, the pounding is
more frequent and larger pounding force, but the largest
pounding force occurs in the right pounding position under
Parkfield wave, the pounding responses is the weakest under
Northridge.
According to table 7, we can find, the responses of high-
pier bridge under El Centro, Parkfield, and Northridge wave,
the main bridge’s displacement is the largest under El Centro
wave, and the approach bridge’s displacement takes second
place. The approach bridge’s displacement is the largest under
Parkfield wave. The above conclusions were resulted from the
natural period of the bridge’s each part and inputted
earthquake motion’s characteristic, when the natural period of
the bridge’s each part is close to a earthquake motion’s
predominant period, their responses should be very
remarkable, thus, the different responses under different
earthquake waves cannot but lead to different pounding
effects.

TABLE 8 THE SHEAR AND MOMENT OF PIERS’ BOTTOM UNDER DIFFERENT EARTHQUAKE MOTIONS
The short pier of left approach The high pier of right
Left crossover pier Right pier of main bridge
earthquake bridge approach bridge
motions shear moment shear moment shear moment shear moment
×106 N ×107 N·m ×106 N ×107 N·m ×106 N ×107 N·m ×106 N ×107 N·m
El Centro 1.377 2.879 1.524 2.657 1.724 4.138 26.392 109.874
Northridge 1.190 2.608 1.214 2.531 1.725 5.281 15.667 79.779
Parkfield 2.408 4.335 2.587 5.167 2.259 8.514 19.134 107.606

TABLE 9 THE PEAK ACCELERATION OF MAIN BRIDGE’S GIRDER UNDER DIFFERENT EARTHQUAKE MOTION (UNIT:m/S2)
earthquake motion Left end Left pier location Mid-span Right pier location Right end
El Centro 5.134 1.991 1.630 1.952 2.846
Northridge 1.705 1.702 1.407 1.698 1.950
Parkfield 2.413 2.053 1.647 2.293 4.922

TABLE 10 THE PEAK ACCELERATION OF APPROACH BRIDGES’ GIRDERS UNDER DIFFERENT EARTHQUAKE MOTION (UNIT:m/S2)
The mid- The short The mid- The high
earthquake The mid-span of Crossover
loaction abutment span of the pier span of the pier
motion the third span pier location
first span location second span location
Left approach girder 7.714 7.372 6.388 5.231 5.437 4.996 10.564
El Centro
Right pproach girder 8.068 7.682 6.668 5.868 5.487 6.469 7.663
Northridge Left approach girder 3.996 3.728 3.148 2.680 2.819 3.157 2.481

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 Right pproach girder 5.889 5.497 4.618 4.042 4.173 4.921 2.877
Left approach girder 8.289 7.810 6.638 5.948 6.197 7.235 5.307
Parkfield
Right pproach girder 13.387 12.663 10.697 9.575 8.438 11.147 11.700

On the basis of table 8, the shear and moment of main
bridge’s piers’ bottom is the largest under El Centro wave,
which is resulted from the largest displacement under El
Centro wave; the shear and moment of approach bridges’
piers’ bottom is the largest under Parkfield wave, which is
resulted from the largest displacement under Parkfield wave.
In the light of Table9&10, under the three earthquake
waves, the peak accelerations of different position of main
bridge’s girder and approach bridges’ girders are dissimilar,
but, the largest peak acceleration are at the pounding positions
of girders.

TABLE 11 THE DISTORTION OF SOME BEARINGS UNDER DIFFERENT EARTHQUAKE MOTION˄UNIT:m˅

earthquake PEFE Sliding plate bearing (approach bridge) rubber-basin bearing(main bridge)
motion Left abutment Right abutment Left crossover pier Left crossover pier Left crossover pier Left crossover pier
El Centro 0.2039 0.2859 0.2915 0.3588 0.3689 0.3433
Northridge 0.1517 0.1434 0.1918 0.2395 0.1950 0.2465
Parkfield 0.3067 0.3513 0.4189 0.4568 0.3624 0.4093

On the basis of table11, as a result of the drastic responses parkfield, for example, the PEFE sliding plate bearing’s
of approach bridges under Parkfield wave, the distortions of distortion is up to 0.4568m, larger than the width 0.4mm of
bearings in approach bridges are also the largest under this bearing, thus, must lead to fall girder

TABLE 12 THE GIRDER END DISPLACEMENTS OF LEFT EXPANSION JOINTS UNDER EL CENTRO EARTHQUAKE MOTION˄UNIT:m˅
Before of Between first Between second Between third Between fourth
After fifth
location Direction first pounding and pounding and third pounding and pounding and fifth
pounding
pounding second pounding pounding fourth pounding pounding
the girder right end Close 0.2040 0.0561 0.0805 0.1108 0.0925 0.0139
of left approach
bridge apart 0.1539 / 0.2026 0.1502 0.1928 0.0837
The girder left end Close 0.2207 / 0.2550 0.2110 0.1637 0.1302
of main bridge apart 0.2819 0.1928 0.2123 0.2237 0.1296 0.1105

TABLE 13 THE GIRDER END DISPLACEMENTS OF RIGHT EXPANSION JOINTS UNDER EL CENTRO EARTHQUAKE MOTION˄UNIT:m˅
Between first Between third
Before of Between second Between fourth Between fifth
pounding and pounding and After sixth
location Direction first pounding and pounding and pounding and
second fourth pounding
pounding third pounding fifth pounding sixth pounding
pounding pounding
the girder left Close 0.1423 0.0897 0.1948 0.1859 0.1396 0.0848 0.0037
end of left
approach bridge apart 0.1854 / 0.2083 0.2540 0.2846 0.1551 0.0492
The girder right Close 0.2806 / 0.1908 0.2116 0.2225 0.1292 0.1093
end of main
bridge apart 0.1610 0.2230 0.2568 0.2126 0.1668 0.1319 0.0835
high-pier bridges, and infect the piers of rigid frame main
In table 12 & 13, the displacement and direction of girders bridge, but, don’t affect markedly the piers under bearing in
before and after each pounding in pounding position are listed, approach bridges.
some conclusions can be attained: the pounding is helpful to 2) the seismic pounding effect in high-pier bridges is
mitigate the response of main bridge, and restrict the very different under different earthquake waves, which is
distortions of main bridge’s piers, is beneficial to main bridge
resulted from natural period of the bridge’s each part and
to some extent. in the contrast, pounding can make approach
bridges to move apart from main bridge, increase the inputted earthquake motion’s characteristic, the different
distortions of their bearings and some piers, as a result lead to responses under different earthquake waves cannot but lead to
damage, and girder falling. different pounding effects.
3) The seismic pounding in high-pier bridges can restrict
V. CONCLUSIONS the distortions of main bridge’s piers, is beneficial to mitigate
the response of main bridge to some extent. In the contrast, the
In the light of the above contrastive analysis, the following
seismic pounding in high-pier bridges can make approach
conclusions can be drawn:
bridges to move apart from main bridge, increase the
1) seismic pounding magnified markedly the peak distortions of their bearings and some piers, as a result lead to
acceleration of main bridge’s and approach bridge’s girder in damage, and girder falling.

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 ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This study is partially supported by Societal Commonweal
Fund Project (Grant No. 2006B06) and National Science [6]
Foundation of China (Grant No. 50808163); the BeiJing
laboratory open fund (EESR2008-12) ˗ Earthquake Science
Associate Fund (Grant No. 106061), Science and technology [7]
project of Hei Long Jiang province (Grant No.QC08C74) and
postdoctor foundation of Hei Long Jiang province (Grant No.
1609014). The author is grateful for the above supports. [8]
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