As one of the main load-carrying components of cable-stayed bridges, bridge towers are typically required to remain elastic even when subjected to severe ground motions with a 2%–3% probability of exceedance in 50 years. To fulfill this special requirement imposed by current seismic design codes, reinforcement ratios in the bridge towers have to be kept significantly higher than if limited ductility behavior of the tower is allowed. In addition, since the foundation capacity is closely related to the moment and shear capacities of the bridge tower, a large increase in bridge construction cost for elastically designed cable-stayed bridge is inevitable. To further investigate the possibility of limited ductility bridge tower design strategies, a new 1/20-scale cable-stayed bridge model with H-shaped bridge towers designed according to strong strut-weak tower column design was tested. The shake table experimental results are compared with a previous strong tower column-weak strut designed full bridge model. A comparison of the results show that ductility design with plastic hinges located on tower columns, i.e., strong strut-weak tower column design, is another effective seismic design strategy that results in only small residual displacement at the top of the tower column, even under very severe earthquake excitations.

作为斜拉桥的主要承载部件之一，即使经受剧烈的地面运动（在50年内超过2％–3％的概率），通常也要求桥塔保持弹性。为了满足当前的抗震设计规范所强加的这一特殊要求，与允许塔的延性受到限制的情况相比，必须保持桥塔的增强比明显更高。另外，由于地基承载力与桥塔的弯矩和抗剪承载力密切相关，因此弹性设计斜拉桥的桥梁建设成本不可避免地大幅度增加。为了进一步研究延性有限的桥塔设计策略的可能性，测试了一种新的1/20比例斜拉桥模型，该模型具有根据强支撑-弱塔塔设计而设计的H形桥塔。将振动台实验结果与以前设计的坚固塔柱-弱支撑全桥模型进行了比较。结果比较表明，在塔柱上使用塑料铰链进行延性设计，即坚固的支撑杆-弱塔柱设计，是另一种有效的抗震设计策略，即使在塔顶柱的情况下，塔顶的残余位移也很小。非常严重的地震激发。