## 6 Conclusions  
The performance of the conventional RC hollow section tall-pier bridge is unsatisfactory under strong ground motions, especially near-fault ones. Many scholars have proposed different concept and method to improve the seismic performance. Although some of them can provide a satisfying seismic responses subjected to moderate, even strong earthquake, there are still some unsolved problem subjected to the strong near-fault ground motions. Due to the lack of specialized seismic design concepts and design methods, the conventional RC tall pier is easy to be damaged, and difficult to repair.  
This study proposed the structural design methods and principles of a new type of composite tall pier based on the concept of earthquake-resilient structures. Based on the piers of a typical tall-pier highway bridge, the new composite tall-pier system, which consists of the four-limb CFST columns, EDMSPs and steel beams, is proposed to improve the seismic performance of tall-pier bridges. Both static and time history analyses of the prototype tall-pier bridge and the new composite tall-pier bridge are conducted to compare their seismic performances.  
The new composite tall pier can provide a satisfying load-carrying capacity and stability, and perform as well as the conventional RC tall piers under basic load combination. Under the SLEs, the new composite tall piers remain elastic and the lateral displacement is similar with the conventional RC tall piers. Both of the seismic performances of two bridges meet the requirements of the damage limitation as regulated in Eurocode 8. However, the conventional RC tall piers experience major damage and the stiffness of the pier decrease sharply under near-fault ground motions considering DDEs. Meanwhile, no damage is found in the CFST column and steel beams during the ground motion inputs. For the new composite tall pier, only the EDMSPs yield to a large extent and serve as the energy-dissipating components and sacrificial components. Besides, the maximum lateral displacements of the new composite tall pier are significantly reduced compared to the conventional RC tall piers.  
To sum up, the proposed composite tall pier has sufficient resistance and stiffness after the strong near-fault earthquakes. The resilient concept could be achieved by replacing the yield EDMSPs, which are made of the readily available materials, without interruption of service or time-consuming reinforcement maintenance after the strong near-fault earthquakes.  
However, future work on the static and pseudo-static test of the proposed tall-pier system is still needed to validate the finite element models. More research is still required to address some potential design challenges, such as the manufacturing details of the connections between the columns and EDMSPs, the configurations of the EDMSPs and so on.  
Conceptualization, W.Z. and Y.S.; formal analysis, Z.C. and Z.W.; writing--review and editing, Z.C., K.L., W.Z. and Y.S.; supervision, K.L., W.Z. and Y.S. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, grant number 51878180, and the Fujian Provincial Transportation Science and Technology Development Project, grant number 201803.  
The authors declare no conflict of interest.  
Figure 10: Distribution of the yield EDMSPs in transverse direction.