DEVELOPMENT OF A MOVING LOAD SIMULATOR: NUMERICALANALYSIS FOR WEIGHT PREDICTION FROM BRIDGE STRUCTURALRESPONSES DATA

摘要

Pavement and bridge structures are often damaged due to the overloading of vehicles.Weigh stations have been in operation for the purpose of ensuring that trucks do not exceed the legalweights of the localities that are being travelled through. But this is inefficient, because the queue lengthsat the weigh station and violators could potentially go through the system. As a way of speeding up theprocess of weighing these heavy vehicles it is proposed that these vehicles are measured while moving onexisting structure such as bridges. The determination of the weight of vehicles crossing a structure isdifficult to ascertain, even using a number of methods that have been proposed by earlier researchers.Hence there is a need to improve the technique of predicting the weight of such as by using laboratorysimulation method. This study applies numerical approximations to predict the weight of load on bridgespecimens using the responses as an input in the calculation. A moving load simulator was designed andis being built. Considering all the constraints at a laboratory, the simulator is designed to carry a maximumload of 200 kN with the maximum speed of 4 m/s. Initially a simulator program using excel software isdeveloped to predict the weight on a single span beam supported at its ends with various fixities. Theprogram is developed base on the responses from the specimens. The prediction shows that the analyticalresults are acceptable.