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Use of seismic early warning information to calibrate variable dampers for structural control of a highway bridge: evaluation of the system robustness

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Abstract

The seismic events occurred in recent years highlighted the extreme vulnerability of large part of the existing constructed facilities and the need to adopt innovative solutions to improve their seismic performance. With this purpose, the possible exploitation of a seismic early warning system (SEWS) in the framework of semi-active structural control using magnetorheological (MR) dampers is herein investigated. The main idea consists in the use of these time-varying properties devices to control an hosting structure by changing their behaviour according to an anticipate estimate, provided by the SEWS, of the peak ground acceleration (PGA) of the incoming earthquake. In this way, the dampers are able to adapt their mechanical characteristics to the specific earthquake obtaining the optimal seismic response. The present paper describes the application of this protection technique to a case-study problem, a highway bridge located in Southern California. The seismic response of the benchmark bridge is investigated by nonlinear time-history analyses by adopting 16 real earthquake ground excitations. These accelerograms cover a wide variety of magnitudes, distances to fault and soil types. Possible errors on estimation of PGA provided by SEWS and their effects on the proposed control system are also considered. The results obtained confirm that unavoidable errors in the PGA estimates provided by the SEWS do not propagate to the seismic response. Conversely, the proposed strategy turns out to damp these errors, resulting in a robust seismic behaviour of the protected structure.

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Acknowledgments

This research has been partially funded by the Italian Department of Civil Protection in the frame of the national project ReLUIS 2009–2012: Theme 3.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Technologies (DiT), University of Naples “Parthenope”, Centro Direzionale, Isola C4, 80143 , Naples, Italy

    Giuseppe Maddaloni, Nicola Caterino, Gianluca Nestovito & Antonio Occhiuzzi

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  1. Giuseppe Maddaloni
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  2. Nicola Caterino
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  3. Gianluca Nestovito
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  4. Antonio Occhiuzzi
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Correspondence to Giuseppe Maddaloni.

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Maddaloni, G., Caterino, N., Nestovito, G. et al. Use of seismic early warning information to calibrate variable dampers for structural control of a highway bridge: evaluation of the system robustness. Bull Earthquake Eng 11, 2407–2428 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10518-013-9510-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10518-013-9510-z

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