Analytical Modeling of Horizontally Curved Steel Girder Highway Bridges for Seismic Analysis

This article introduces a generic modeling approach that is suitable for static and dynamic analysis, and response assessment of highway bridges with varying levels of irregularities. The proposed approach and modeling recommendations are based on grillage modeling rules that allows explicit representation of various types of details and components. The validity and accuracy of the proposed approach is demonstrated against three-dimensional finite element models as well as experimentally recorded response various benchmark bridges. While achieving remarkable accuracy, the required analysis time was also reduced up to 80%, making the proposed approach suitable for computationally intensive studies.