Digital twin-based life-cycle seismic performance assessment of a long-span cable-stayed bridge

Abstract Long-span cable-stayed bridges often have a design service life of more than a hundred years, during which they may experience multiple earthquake events and accumulate seismic damage if they are located in seismic-prone regions. Earthquake occurrence is discretely and randomly distributed over the life cycle of a long-span cable-stayed bridge and often causes sudden drops in the structural performance instead of yearly fixed seismic performance degradation. This study thus proposes a digital twin-based life-cycle seismic performance assessment method for long-span cable-stayed bridges. The major components of this method include: (1) a seismic hazard analysis-based generation method of earthquake occurrence sequence; (2) a digital twin-based structural response prediction method considering lifetime earthquake occurrence and sequence; and (3) a service life quantification method. The proposed method is applied to a scaled long-span cable-stayed bridge with a series of shake table tests. The results show that the digital twin can closely reproduce the life-cycle seismic response of the bridge under sequential earthquakes. The proposed assessment method provides a more intuitive presentation of the life-cycle seismic damage accumulation process and a more accurate estimation of the service life of a long-span cable-stayed bridge.