Cumulative deformation of high-speed railway bridge pier under repeated earthquakes

Residual deformation of high-speed railway bridge piers is cumulative under repeated earthquakes, and influences the safety and ride comfort of high-speed trains. This paper investigates the effects of the peak ground acceleration, longitudinal reinforcement ratio, and axial compression ratio on the cumulative deformation through finite element analysis. A simply-supported beam bridge pier model is established using nonlinear beam-column elements in OpenSees, and validated against a shaking table test. Repeated earthquakes were input in the model. The results show that the cumulative deformation of the bridge piers under repeated earthquakes increases with the peak ground acceleration and the axial compression ratio, and decreases with the longitudinal reinforcement ratio.