In the design of a structure, the implementation of reliable soil-foundation-structure interaction into the analysis process plays a very important role. The paper presents a determination of parameters of a suitably chosen soil-foundation model and their influence on the structure response. Since the mechanical data for the structure can be determined with satisfactory accuracy, the properties of the soil-foundation model were identified using measured dynamic response of the real structure. A simple model describing soil-foundation structure was incorporated into the classical 3-D finite element analysis of the structure with commercial software. Results obtained from the measured data on the pier were afterwards compared with those obtained with the finite model of the pier-foundation-soil structure. On the basis of this comparison the coefficients describing the properties in the soil-foundation model were adjusted until the calculated dynamic response coincided with the measured ones. In this way, the difference between both results was reduced to 1%. Full-scale tests measuring eigenmotion of the bridge were performed through all erection stages of the new bridge in Maribor. In this way an effective and experimentally verified 3-D model for a complex dynamic analysis of the bridge under the earthquake loading was obtained. The significant advantage of the obtained model is that it was updated on the basis of the dynamic measurements thus improving the model on the basis of in-situ geomechanical measurements. The model is very accurate in describing the upper structure and economical in describing the soil mass thus representing an optimal solution regarding computational efforts
