Seismic spatial effects on dynamic response of long-span bridges in stationary inhomogeneous random fields

The seismic analysis of long-span bridges subjected to multiple ground excitations is an important problem. The conventional response spectrum method neglects the spatial effects of ground motion, and therefore may result in questionable conclusions. The random vibration approach has been regarded as more reliable. Unfortunately, so far, computational difficulties have not yet been satisfactorily resolved. In this paper, an accurate and efficient random vibration approach — pseudo excitation method (PEM), by which the above difficulties are overcome, is presented. It has been successfully used in the three dimensional seismic analysis of a number of long-span bridges with thousands of degrees of freedom and dozens of supports. The numerical results of a typical bridge show that the seismic spatial effects, particularly the wave passage effect, are sometimes quite important in evaluating the safety of long-span bridges.