Practical Design Method of Yielding Steel Dampers in Concrete Cable-Stayed Bridges

Restrained transversal tower/pier–girder connections of cable-stayed bridges may lead to high seismic demands for tower columns when subject to earthquake excitations; however, free transversal tower/pier–girder connections may cause large relative displacement. Using an energy dissipation system can effectively control the bending moment of tower columns and the relative tower/pier-girder displacement simultaneously, but repeated time history analyses are needed to determine reasonable design parameters, such as yield strength. In order to improve design efficiency, a practical design method is demanded. Therefore, the influence of yielding strength at different locations is studied by using comprehensive and parametric time history analyses at first. The results indicate that yielding steel dampers can significantly reduce the bending moment at tower columns and the relative pier–girder displacement due to the system switch mechanism during the vibration. Meanwhile, the yielding steel damper shows its general effect on reducing relative displacement between all piers/tower columns and the main girder as well, with only a localized effect on controlling seismic induced forces. Furthermore, a practical design method is proposed for engineering practices to determine key parameters of the yielding steel damper.