| Abstract: | Seismic hazards pose a significant concern for older steel bridges in the Central and Eastern USA. The majority of these bridges still use steel bearings that are not designed to sustain earthquake loads. To assess older bridge vulnerability, an understanding of the cyclic behaviour of their components, such as steel bolster and rocker bearings, is needed. A theoretical analysis is conducted to understand steel bearing behaviour and their potential limit states, which also serves to validate bearing finite element models. The high fidelity models are used to evaluate the hysteretic behaviour of the bearings. The influence of gravity load on the response is evaluated to consider different bridge configurations, while varying the friction coefficient between steel surfaces allows for consideration of effects from ageing and corrosion. These parameters are shown to influence the response suggesting the need to consider ageing effects in assessing the vulnerability of in situ bridges. |
