Influence of ambient temperature in cold regions on the seismic vulnerability of continuous girder bridges with laminated rubber bearings
In the isolation design of bridges in cold regions,the current code only considers the in-fluence of ambient temperature on the mechanical properties of rubber bearings.The code,how-ever,overlooks how temperature affects the properties of concrete materials used in piers.This paper focuses on a two-segment,3×30 m continuous concrete girder bridge in the alpine region.The aim was to determine the influence of temperature on the bridge's mechanical parameters by conducting a series of tests on the compressive performance of pier concrete materials at different ambient temperatures.Based on the test results,modifications were made to the mechanical pa-rameters of the concrete used in the piers at different ambient temperatures.This allowed for the creation of refined nonlinear finite element models of the entire bridge at different ambient tem-peratures.Utilizing the incremental dynamic analysis,we discussed the seismic vulnerability of the bridge at different ambient temperatures.The results show that extreme temperature changes the material parameters of pier concrete and the stiffness of bearings,thus causing the natural frequency of the bridge to decrease as temperature increases.In the event of an earthquake,the displacement at the top of the pier top increases by 26.8%at extremely low temperatures.Mean-while,bearing displacement increases by 19.4%at extremely high temperatures compared with that at normal temperatures.According to the current code,the failure probability of bearings and the entire bridge system is relatively low at extremely low temperatures.However,the fail-ure probability of the structure and components is significantly higher at extremely high tempera-tures,a factor that should be closely considered during design.Compared to normal tempera-tures,the failure probability of the pier,bearing,and bridge system at extremely low tempera-tures increases by 45.0%,35.2%,and 27.5%,respectively.Therefore,the influence of low tempera-tures on seismic performance should be considered when designing bridges like this in cold regions.