Multibody System Discrete Time Transfer Matrix Method for Nonlinear Shear Dynamic analysis of Immersed Tunnels

Shear seismic response analysis is critical for seismic design of immersed tunnels. According to the structural characters of immersed tunnels and shear dynamic response of their joints, a multibody dynamic model consisting of multi-rigid body, shear hinge, and viscous damping hinge is proposed for shear response analysis, in which the dynamic stiffness of the shear hinge is divided into two stages based on a threshold. Following the discrete time transfer matrix method for multibody system dynamics (MS-DT-TMM), the mechanical model and mathematical expression of each tunnel element is derived first and then assembled for the whole tunnel system. A solution procedure is proposed to solve the shear dynamic response of immersed tunnels using the proposed multibody system model. It is shown that the MS-DT-TMM has the same computational accuracy as the finite element method (FEM) and the modeling process is more efficient and flexible when compared to FEM. Although the MS-DT-TMM discussed herein is only applied to shear response analysis, it can easily be extended to analyze axial force and bending moment of immersed tunnels leading to a complete, rapid yet accurate enough seismic analysis of immersed tunnels suitable for engineering practices.