Effect of road surface roughness on indirect approach for measuring bridge frequencies from a passing vehicle

摘要

The indirect approach for measuring the bridge frequencies from the dynamic responses of a passing vehicle is a highly potential method. In this study, the effect of road surface roughness on such an approach is studied through finite element simulations. A two-dimensional mathematical model with the vehicle simulated as a moving sprung mass and the bridge as a simply-supported beam is adopted. The dynamic responses of the passing vehicle are solved by the finite element method along with the Newmark beta method. Through the numerical examples studied, it is shown that the presence of surface roughness may have negative consequence on the extraction of bridge frequencies from the test vehicle. However, such a shortcoming can be overcome either by introducing multiple moving vehicles on the bridge, besides the test vehicle, or by raising the moving speed of the accompanying vehicles.