Influence of scour on the dynamic behaviour and seismic response of bridges

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Earthquake and scouring are the leading causes of bridge failure worldwide, resulting not only in casualties and fatalities but also in enormous societal and economic losses. A great number of bridges in earthquake-prone countries cross rivers and have shallow foundations, which renders them highly vulnerable to the combined effects of earthquake and flood-induced scour. This thesis investigates the problem through a combination of experimental and numerical studies that shed light on the effect of scour on the dynamic behaviour and seismic response of structures with shallow foundations. The numerical simulation of the behaviour of the soil-foundation-structural system is conducted in the linear viscoelastic domain using the substructure approach, which allows to decouple the behaviour of the superstructure from the one of the soil-foundation system. The proposed approach, validated against available results from experimental tests carried out on a structural prototype subjected to scour, is used to conduct extensive parametric analyses. The study results shed light on the effects of scour on the dynamic properties and fundamental frequency of vibration of bridges with shallow foundations and have important implications on the development of inverse techniques for scour identification based on the evaluation of the changes in the bridge modal properties. They also contribute to quantify the impact of scour on the seismic response of bridges with shallow foundations.

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