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Efficient earthquake simulation of stiff and high DOF bridge expansion joint models with Python
(2021)
Various types of seismic protection devices has been developed to protect structures like bridges from collapse during an earthquake event, such as hydraulic or metallic hysteresis dampers and spherical pendulum bearings. The expansion joints however, which are already included in most large-span bridges, are not considered as an
earthquake protection device regardless of the significant friction forces they produce. These friction forces can be seen as damping forces between the shaking environment and the oscillating bridge. To investigate the effect of those damping forces during different earthquake loads, a multibody dynamics simulation model of the expansion joints will be created. This model should be accurate enough to represent the generation of the damping forces and effects of the geometric setup of the expansion joints. Because large expansion joints for large-span bridges are of special interest, the number of degrees of freedom (DOF) becomes very high. Because this models include stiff bushings, implicit solvers need to be used to gain a stable simulation. Expansion joints are almost unique constructions for every specific bridge, which requires a automated model generation. Because of its excellent modules for numerical mathematics, the scripting language Python is used. To create an efficient simulation model, several optimization techniques such as Just-In-Time (JIT) compilation and parallelization are implemented and tested.