Investigation of the in-plane and out-plane earthquake behavior of the historical arc bridge

In our country, there are many historical stone bridges which have survived from the Roman, Byzantine, Seljuk and Ottoman periods to the present and which have contributed significantly to the transportation system. Stone arch bridges usually consist of structural elements such as arch, sidewall, filling, abutment and foundation. Arch bridges are generally affected by flood, earthquake, wind and traffic loads passing over them. Among these external effects, earthquakes are the most important load effects that cause damage to the structural elements of the bridges. The most vulnerable and mostly damaged element in the out of plane movements of horizontal load affected bridges such as earthquake, flood and wind are the side walls. Increasing the length and height of the side walls in the bridges increases its fragility in the plane and out of plane direction. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the effect of interaction between the bearing units of a historical masonry bridge under seismic effects on the in plane and out of plane behavior of the bridge side walls using linear and nonlinear analysis methods. The first stone arch bridge of Bartınprovince, which was built in 1787, was chosen as the working area. Every day, thousands of vehicles and pedestrians pass over the bridge on the Kozcağız river. The total length of the arch bridge with two spans is 44m. The arch spans are 12.5 m length and 7.8 m height. The total width of the bridge is 8.5 m and its length over the river is 30m. The ABAQUS V10 (2010) program has been used to form the finite element model of the bridge and to perform linear and nonlinear time history seismic analyses. Two separate finite element models have been formed to investigate the effect of the interaction between the masonry units forming the bridge bearing system on structural behavior. In the first of the finite element models formed, the interaction between masonry units is not taken into account. In the second, modeling has been done by taking interaction into account. Concrete damage plasticity approach has been used in defining the nonlinear material behavior of the sidewall and arch units of the bridge, and Mohr-Coulomb approach has been used in defining the nonlinear behavior of the filling unit. The east-west component of the acceleration records of the 17 August 1999 Kocaeli earthquake has been used in the time history seismic analyses of the structures. The acceleration recording has been applied separately to the bridge in the out of plane (upstream-downstream) and in plane (traffic flow) directions. At the end of the study, linear and nonlinear analyses have been compared using the non-interaction interface model. Then, the nonlinear in plane and out of plane behavior of interaction and non-interaction interface models have been compared. At the end of the study, it has been seen that nonlinear analysis methods should be used in determining the structural behavior of the structures. In addition, it has been concluded that interface interaction significantly affects the side wall behavior of arch bridges. Therefore, it has been suggested to consider the interface interaction in determining the structural behavior of the arch bridges.